Former Zimbabwean president Canaan Banana has been sued for damages of $115,248 (£74,354) by an ex-police aide who accuses him of rape and forcing him into a homosexual relationship.
A lawyer acting for former police inspector Jefta Dube, confirmed yesterday he had filed a civil lawsuit with the high court.
Banana (61), is now a professor of religion at the University of Zimbabwe. He is under police investigation on charges that he abused Dube (35), while he was his aide-de-camp in the 1980s.
Dube was sentenced to 10 years in jail in February for the 1995 fatal shooting of a fellow policeman who goaded him by calling him "Banana's wife".
Retired British colonel Tim Spicer told yesterday how he was threatened with a gun to his head and beaten up after being captured as he led a team of mercenaries in Papua New Guinea.
Col Spicer (44), a Falklands hero who was awarded the OBE, said he and his 65 mercenaries were recruited for £24 million by the government of the South Sea nation to help overthrow a nine-year rebellion on the copper-rich island of Bougainville. He was arrested three weeks ago, was mistreated for six days and then placed under house arrest until charges against him were dropped.
Laura Nyro, US singer-song-writer who wrote And When I Die, Wedding Bell Blues and Stoned Soul Picnic, has died at the age of 49.
She died at her home in Danbury, Connecticut, on Tuesday after a battle with ovarian cancer.