Smuggled film documents election fraud

HARARE, Zimbabwe, July 5 (UPI) -- A British newspaper said Saturday a secret film made for it by a prison guard documents vote-rigging in the recent Zimbabwean presidential election.

The Guardian said the film, smuggled out of the country by former prison guard Shepherd Yuda showed members of Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's ZANU-PF party demanding that prison workers fill in their postal ballots with them watching. The film also allegedly shows party members urging voters to pretend they were illiterate when they went to the polls so election judges could fill in their votes for them.

Mugabe claims to have won the June 27 presidential run-off vote with 90 percent of the vote after the main opposition candidate, Morgan Tsvangirai, dropped out of the race in the face of escalating pre-election violence contending a free and fair election was not possible in Zimbabwe.

Tsvangirai's Movement for Democratic Change Party claims as many as 80 of its backers had been slain in the violence and that the opposition has been targeted for repression.

The newspaper said Yuda's film, which was shot over a six-day period prior to the election, also contains footage of MDC General Secretary Tendai Biti in leg irons in jail. Biti is out now free on bail but faces treason charges carrying the death penalty.