Mugabe's militia burn wife of opposition leader alive

Many of us have already commented on the disastrous state of affairs in Zimbabwe. But just when we thought Robert Mugabe's thugs couldn't make more of a mockery of human decency, we realize that we were wrong. A report from the Times of London describes an incident last Friday where an opposition party leader's wife was burned alive:

The men who pulled up in three white pickup trucks were looking for Patson Chipiro, head of the Zimbabwean opposition party in Mhondoro district. His wife, Dadirai, told them he was in Harare but would be back later in the day, and the men departed.

An hour later they were back. They grabbed Mrs Chipiro and chopped off one of her hands and both her feet. Then they threw her into her hut, locked the door and threw a petrol bomb through the window.

The Times calls it one of "the most grotesque incidents of violence" that has occurred in Zimbabwe since Mugabe's regime took power in 1980. It's hard to imagine anything worse happening, but with an election scheduled for later this month (an election already won by opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai) it's becoming morbidly clear that we haven't seen the end of Mugabe's reign of terror.