Tsvangirai crash cause questioned

Tsvangirai crash cause questioned

There has as yet been no suggestion of foul play over the crash
Early reports from an investigation by Zimbabwe's MDC suggest that a car crash which killed PM Morgan Tsvangirai's wife may not have been accidental.

Senior MDC officials told the BBC that investigators are questioning the cause of the March crash, in which Mr Tsvangirai was injured.

At first, Mr Tsvangirai said he thought the crash had been an accident.

The MDC, formerly in opposition, entered a power-sharing agreement with President Robert Mugabe in February.

But the evidence which has so far come to light in the MDC investigation leads senior MDC officials to believe that the whole affair was highly questionable, says the BBC's John Simpson, who has been in Zimbabwe.

The car carrying Mr Tsvangirai and his wife was hit by a lorry on a main road south of Harare.

The MDC now believes that the man driving the lorry was an ex-soldier who had replaced the usual driver a short time before.

According to a senior source, when Mr Tsvangirai's convoy reached a long, straight stretch of road his escort car, supplied by Zimbabwe's Central Intelligence Organisation (CIO) suddenly speeded up and drove on out of sight.

Soon afterwards a lorry appeared, coming fast over the brow of a hill from the opposite direction.

It sideswiped Mr Tsvangirai's car, and knocked it off the road.

Mrs Tsvangirai was killed outright, and her husband was injured.

Yet a senior MDC source claims that the CIO guards did not get out to help, and that when a local white farmer arrived and filmed the scene, he was arrested and his pictures confiscated.