Justice Michael Gillespie outlined reasons for his resignation in a review of a criminal case published in Harare on Saturday, weeks after he left the capital to live in England.

In his review of a light sentence handed down to two men convicted of extortion during a wave of so-called company invasions by militant supporters of President Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party, Mr Gillespie accused the government of intimidating the judiciary and putting its supporters above the law.

Growing lawlessness

The company invasions followed the widescale and often violent occupation of white-owned farms by Zanu-PF supporters in support of Mr Mugabe's land redistribution programme.

Mr Gillespie said the men had extorted money from a Harare company in the name of the Zanu-PF, a party which he said was "believed to be controlling similar acts of violence and intimidation throughout the country".

The two men, Mr Gillespie said, "are among those who have sought to take advantage of the increasing breakdown of the rule of law engineered by the executive".

"Your behaviour was a symptom of the breakdown to mob rule... which is the inevitable consequence when the government of the day, by its actions, no matter what words it uses, effectively renounces its commitment to the rule of law."