<em>New York Times</em> Correspondent Barry Bearak On His Ordeal Being Jailed Zimbabwe

New York Times correspondent Barry Bearak, who was jailed earlier this month in Zimbabwe where he was reporting on the country's elections, has a lengthy piece in Sunday's Times about his experience. Bearak was released on bail a few days after being taken into custody, for, as he writes in his Times piece, the crime of "committing journalism:

I had never been arrested before and the prospect of prison in Zimbabwe, one of the poorest, most repressive places on earth, seemed especially forbidding: the squalor, the teeming cells, the possibility of beatings. But I told myself what I'd repeatedly taught my two children: Life is a collection of experiences. You savor the good, you learn from the bad.

I was being charged with the crime of "committing journalism." One of my captors, Detective Inspector Dani Rangwani, described the offense to me as something despicable, almost hissing the words: "You've been gathering, processing and disseminating the news."

Read more of Bearak's account.