Heavily armed police raided a hotel in HarareÂ’s southern suburb of Mabelreign early morning Tuesday and severely assaulted the guests. The uniformed forces arrived at the Feathers Hotel at around 04:00 claiming they were searching for a fugitive armed robber. Without informing the management, the police surrounded the hotel and started assaulting the staff members on duty, accusing them of housing the wanted man.
Police then searched all the hotel rooms and assaulted their occupants, including this journalist who had booked there for the night. One of the attacked hotel guests who refused to be named said: “I was sleeping with my wife in our room and the police used force to open the door. They assaulted us without posing any questions. My wife was left nude during the scuffle.”
However, guests who had been turned out of their rooms by the police and grouped in the hotel’s corridors were saved from further beatings when a sound emerged from one of the rooms in the first floor. When police went to investigate, they found a woman sleeping in the room. She claimed she was a prostitute who had been hired by “someone” for the night. She claimed she did not know her lovebird who had disappeared whilst she was asleep.
Police officers at the scene suspected that the suspected robber had jumped to the ground but the suspect was not seen by any of their colleagues who had surrounded the hotel. The hotel guests were then paraded for identification. The wanted man’s accomplice – who was arrested in connection with a shooting incident – conducted the identification and not any of the guests was positively identified. |