Zimbabwean spokesman still faces the death penalty for treason after speaking out against Mugabe

Last week a Zimbabwean court remanded opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party secretary general Tendai Biti's trial for speaking out against Robert Mugabe to next month.

Although two of the four charges were dropped, the charge of treason against Biti and for which he faces the death penalty if convicted stays, his lawyer said.

This story below shows why he must not be forgotten in Zimbabwe's troubled times.

A KEY opponent of tyrant Robert Mugabe is facing the death penalty – after lifting the lid on Zimbabwe’s brutal regime to The Sun.

Tendai Biti told of the extent Mugabe uses violence to intimidate voters after giving us an exclusive interview in April.

The Sun did not name Mr Biti, who is deputy leader of the country’s opposition party.

Hero ... Tendai Biti with Sun's Virginia in Harare

But days later he was forced to flee to South Africa after being visited at home by secret police.

When he returned last Thursday he was arrested at Harare airport in the country’s capital.

Brutal regime ... Robert Mugabe

Zimbabwe’s government – dubbed a “cabal of criminals” by outraged PM Gordon Brown yesterday – now plans to execute him for “treason and making malicious statements detrimental to state interests”.

Mr Biti, 41 – the Secretary General of the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) – was brought before a court on Saturday, handcuffed and “looking terrified”.

Chillingly he predicted Mugabe would “hunt him like an animal” for talking to The Sun during our meeting in Harare.

Two weeks earlier, his boss Morgan Tsvangirai beat Mugabe’s Zanu PF ruling party in the presidential election – a result the 84-year-old dictator refused to recognise. Mr Biti also told us Mugabe would intimidate voters ahead of a June 27 presidential run-off. Since March, at least 66 opposition supporters have been killed in violence.

Mugabe vowed to “go to war” in a new era of terror if “pathetic Western puppet” Tsvangirai wins.

In April Mr Biti – who met us wearing a Yorkshire flat cap – said: “Zimbabwe is hurtling towards disaster. People are starving, bodies are mounting. There is no room left in graveyards.

“A paper like The Sun would never be allowed under Mugabe. He is too scared of what you may see.

“Mugabe refuses to give up power even though he has lost, so he is resorting to terror. Farms are being burned to the ground, people tortured and British settlers driven out. Life expectancy in the 1980s was 60. Now it is 37 and falling.”

The brave politician also exposed Mugabe’s bid to kill Mr Tsvangirai by switching off the runway lights at Harare as his plane was about to land. Passengers told how the pilot had to abandon his landing.

Mr Biti said: “Imagine if Gordon Brown tried to crash David Cameron’s plane. There’d be uproar.”

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said yesterday: “Tendai Biti has at heart only the best for his country.

“He is a man of moral courage and vision. He knew what the regime had in store for him and decided to risk his own freedom to show the world its illegal disregard for the rule of law.”