'Israeli spies helping Mugabe'

Zimbabwe's President Robert Mugabe has enlisted the services of Israeli computer experts with links to the Jewish state's Mossad spy agency to help steal a weekend vote, the opposition said on Thursday.

Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) secretary general Tendai Biti claimed that Mugabe has hired an Israeli company manned by IT experts who are linked to Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency, to doctor the voters' roll to help him win the tightly-contested vote with around a 60% majority.

"We are getting, by the second, evidence of the manner in which Mugabe and his cronies are assaulting this election," said Biti.

"Mugabe intends to steal this election ... through the technical assault. They are thoroughly organised, thoroughly computerised. The voters' roll and technology is the key vehicle of fraud that they intend to use.

"This is based on sophisticated Israel technology. All the people in the firm are Mossad.

"They are very experienced people who know what they are doing."

The MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai went on trial in 2003 for treason in a case largely based on an interview he conducted with an ex-Mossad agent who was later discredited after being exposed as being on the government pay roll.

To illustrate what it said was evidence of how the voters' roll had been inflated, the MDC made a slide presentation of its investigations of one Harare constituency where around 1 000 voters had been registered as residents of a 300m² undeveloped piece of land.

Biti said the MDC was filing a court application over the involvement of the Israel firm in the election.

"This election, unlike in 2002, where it was stolen through people being killed and through people being beaten up, this election is being stolen and lost through the computer." News 24