Job Sikhala, 30, a tall, energetic leader of Zimbabwe’s opposition Movement for Democratic Change, chain smokes as he tells his story: Although he sits in Parliament, he has been arrested 17 times in the last three years. The last time police took him, blindfolded, to a basement room outside Harare. During the next eight hours they beat him, applied electrodes to his mouth and genitals, urinated on him and forced him to swallow poison. Two days later they released him on bail, charged with sedition - an accusation quickly thrown out in court. During hospitalization, doctors confirmed evidence of torture. "It was a terrible experience, gruesome and horrendous,” he says. “This regime has lost control of its senses. It should not be recognized by anyone.”