Martha O’Donovan, a 25-year-old woman from New Jersey who now lives in Zimbabwe, was arrested today for tweeting insults about President Robert Mugabe. She now faces up to 20 years in prison.
O’Donovan worked at the satirical social media outlet Magamba TV, in the capital Harare, where she apparently tweeted a couple of things under the Twitter handle @matigary that hurt the president’s feelings.
According to AP, the offending tweet was: “We are being led by a selfish and sick man,” along with an image of 93-year-old Mugabe with a catheter.
And according to The Guardian, “the offending tweet referred to a ‘goblin whose wife and stepson bought a Rolls Royce.'”
She has been charged with “undermining the authority of or insulting the president” and “subverting a constitutionally elected government,” says AP. O’Donovan denies the allegations as “baseless and malicious.”
