Nine Zimbabwean opposition activists have been abducted from hospital by suspected state security agents, their lawyer told the Press on Sunday.

The Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) opposition party members were admitted in hospital on Saturday for treatment for injuries suffered when they were brutally assaulted and tortured by the police.

Zimbabwe?s police and secret service agency have over the past few weeks intensified a crackdown against a resurgent MDC which has seen leading figures of the opposition party including leader of its main Morgan Tsvangirai beaten up and injured. MDC lawyer Alec Muchadehama said the nine ?were abducted last night from hospital by state security agents. They were taken from the wards without any hospital discharge cards or anything to say they have been released.?

Muchadehama said the suspected state agents were in the company of prison service officials when they abducted the MDC activists and took them to an as yet unknown destination. ?Right now we do not know where they are and why they were taken,? Muchadehama said. Both Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi and Justice Minister Patrick Chinamasa were not immediately available for comment on the matter.

The MDC officials were earlier last week arrested by the police on allegations that they were behind a spate of petrol bombing attacks against police stations and a train that President Robert Mugabe?s government has claimed is part of a wider campaign of violence by the opposition to topple it from power.

The MDC denies it is behind the firebombing incidents, which it says are being orchestrated by government agents in a bid to find an excuse to clamp down on the opposition party.

The opposition activists had to be rushed to hospital after two of them collapsed while awaiting a hearing on their application for bail at a magistrate?s court on Saturday. The abduction of the MDC activists comes hard on the heels of an emergency Southern African Development Community (SADC) summit last Thursday which gave its public backing to Mugabe and appealed for the lifting of Western sanctions against his government.

The summit which many had hoped would push Mugabe harder to uphold democracy and stop persecuting opponents also appointed South Africa?s President Thabo Mbeki to mediate between the Harare administration and the MDC.

But a defiant Mugabe said at a meeting a day after the SADC summit that he had told regional leaders that his police had beaten up Tsvangirai because the MDC leader had ?asked for it?.

Mugabe also claimed SADC leaders had accepted his explanation of the situation in Zimbabwe and fully supported his government?s controversial actions.

<B>© Zimonline