{"id":59735,"date":"2026-08-30T13:57:40","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T13:57:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/zambian-opposition-leader-brian-mundubile-charged-with-treason\/"},"modified":"2026-08-30T13:57:40","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T13:57:40","slug":"zambian-opposition-leader-brian-mundubile-charged-with-treason","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/zambian-opposition-leader-brian-mundubile-charged-with-treason\/","title":{"rendered":"Zambian opposition leader Brian Mundubile charged with treason"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Zambian opposition leader Brian Mundubile has been charged with treason, his lawyer has said amid heightened political tensions in the country.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mundubile was arrested on Thursday, after a deadly raid by the authorities led the opposition politician to go into hiding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">He had disputed the results of the country&#8217;s recent presidential election, which saw incumbent President Hakainde Hichilema securing a second term.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The authorities then accused Mundubile&#8217;s NRPUP party of planning an armed insurgency, which it denied.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">On Saturday night, Mundubile&#8217;s lawyer Milner Katolo announced that his client had been charged with treason. The opposition leader looks forward to answering the accusation in court, Katolo told the <a href=\"https:\/\/zambianeye.com\/police-formally-charge-mundubile-makebi-16-others-with-treason\/\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">Zambian Eye<span class=\"visually-hidden ssrcss-i2z2ig-VisuallyHidden e16en2lz0\">, <!-- -->external<\/span><\/a>. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The lawyer said 17 others, including Mundubile&#8217;s running mate Makebi Zulu, had also been charged with treason.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Mundubile gained 38% of the vote in the 13 August election, while Hichilema secured 60%, official results show.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The day after the poll, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/cg5ljlzedd5o\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\">security forces raided a property in the capital, Lusaka, linked to Mundubile, killing a former cabinet minister<\/a> and arresting a number of other politicians.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Following the raid, Mundubile and Zulu took refuge at a United Nations building in the city. The pair were detained after the president put pressure on the UN to hand them over.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The opposition was unable to mount a legal challenge to the election outcome as the courts were sealed off by the authorities on Monday, the final day that a case could be filed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Hichilema is due to be sworn in for a second term on 1 September.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Regional and international observers described the election day as largely peaceful, but Zambia&#8217;s Human Rights Commission has called for accountability over people whose whereabouts remain unknown following arrests and security operations around the elections.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><br \/>\n<br \/><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/articles\/c20lwqpx70qo?at_medium=RSS&#038;at_campaign=rss\">Source link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Zambian opposition leader Brian Mundubile has been charged with treason, his lawyer has said amid heightened political tensions in the country. Mundubile was arrested on Thursday, after a deadly raid by the authorities led the opposition politician to go into hiding. He had disputed the results of the country&#8217;s recent presidential election, which saw incumbent [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":59736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-59735","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59735","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=59735"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59735\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59737,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59735\/revisions\/59737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59735"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59735"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.godj.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59735"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}