Zimbabwe police on Thursday (August 24) said they arrested 41 workers from election monitoring groups and seized their equipment, including computers, to tabulate vote count results.

The votes are being tallied after widespread delays led to voting being extended until Thursday evening at dozens of polling stations.

The arrested monitors work with two accredited monitoring organizations – the Zimbabwe Election Support Network and the Election Resource Center – which have deployed more than 7,500 monitors across the country.

Police spokesman Paul Nyathi accused the workers of being involved in “subversive and criminal activities” and of “coordinating the alleged publication of election results by certain civic organizations”.

The arrests, made during raids at various locations including a hotel, were criticized by the Zimbabwe Lawyers for Human Rights group, saying the workers were fulfilling their mandate as accredited election observers.

Spokesman for the main opposition Citizens’ Coalition for Change, Charles Kwaramba, criticized a move to ban observers from monitoring and disseminating the truth about the elections.

Democracy expert Nick Cheeseman said the arrests were “to prevent parallel vote counting” and the release of “the clearest evidence yet that ZANU-PF thinks it has lost and has begun to panic.”

Zimbabwe’s history of disputed elections has made many people suspicious of official results. Nearly half of those polled in a pre-election survey by Afrobarometer, a prominent research organization, said they fear “that the results announced may not reflect the results counted”.

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