A Zimbabwean court has postponed to Jan. 4 the trial of a U.S. citizen accused of attempting to undermine the authority of former Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe’s government.
Martha O‘Donovan, 25, who is currently free on bail, denies the charges which centre on a Twitter post the state says she wrote in October calling 93-year-old Mugabe a “selfish and sick man”.
Mugabe resigned a few weeks later in the wake of a de facto military coup and was succeeded by Emmerson Mnangagwa, who Mugabe had sacked as his deputy only a week before.
The state said it needed more time to complete its investigations into the allegations against O‘Donovan, who works for Magamba TV, which describes itself as Zimbabwe’s leading producer of political satire. When he released her on bail last month, High Court Judge Clement Phiri said there was “patent absence of facts” in the state’s case against her.