President Robert Mugabe on Thursday told Western countries to "go hang" after international outrage over charges his government assaulted the main opposition leader in police detention.

Opposition officials say police tortured Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) leader Morgan Tsvangirai and several opposition and civic groups' leaders on Sunday when they tried to attend a prayer vigil in a Harare township.

But the government has suggested Tsvangirai and his group resisted arrest and on Thursday upped the ante, accusing opposition supporters of waging a militia-style campaign of violence to topple Mugabe from power.

"It's the West as usual , when they criticise the government trying to prevent violence and punish the perpetrators of that violence, we take the position that they can go hang," Mugabe said after a meeting with Tanzanian leader Jikaya Kikwete.

The 83-year-old Mugabe, in power since independence from Britain in 1980 and who frequently brands the MDC a puppet party sponsored by the West, was defiant alongside Kikwete.

"Here are groups of persons who went out of their way to effect a campaign of violence and we hear no criticism at all of those actions of violence, none at all," Mugabe said when asked to respond to criticism of his government's conduct.

Police said three officers were badly hurt late on Tuesday when suspected opposition supporters petrol bombed a police station in a Harare suburb, leaving their house in flames adding that the MDC's "orgy of violence was spreading" in the country.

"We believe that the attacks are assuming a militia-type of form," police spokesman Wayne Bvudzijenahe said as state television showed the badly burnt officers in hospital.

www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/mar/16/zimbabwe.topstories3