American Reporter Will Fight Expulsion Order

An American journalist who was ordered to leave Zimbabwe within 24 hours after being found not guilty of publishing a false story will challenge the expulsion order in court today.

Andrew Meldrum, an Ohio native and the Zimbabwe correspondent of Britain’s Guardian newspaper, said the High Court would hear his appeal that the order by President Robert Mugabe’s government to revoke his permanent residence permit was “unfair and illegal.”

The judge said that although Meldrum had reproduced a false story from a local daily saying that Mugabe’s supporters had beheaded a woman while her two children watched, he had tried to verify the story with the police, who had refused to cooperate.