Harare  - A Zimbabwean High Court judge is to rule Friday on whether criminal proceedings against human rights activist Jestina Mukoko on charges of plotting to topple President Robert Mugabe's government should be halted until circumstances surrounding her kidnapping and subsequent arrest are established.

This follows an urgent application filed Wednesday by Mukoko's lawyer, Beatrice Mtetwa, seeking an order compelling the police and the attorney general to identify the people who abducted her.

Mukoko was seized early on the morning of December 3 from her home in Norton, some 40 kilometres south-west of the capital Harare. After the abduction she could not be accounted for three weeks.

The police said they were treating the matter as a kidnapping. She only appeared in public at a court on December 24 to face charges of recruiting for banditry.

Dydimus Mutasa, Zimbabwe's state security minister, said in an affidavit filed to judge Alpheus Chitakunya that the people who kidnapped Mukoko must not be identified, citing the "sensitivity" of the case.

But Mtetwa told journalists outside the court that she was not happy about the minister's explanation.

"If anybody has committed an offence the law is very clear - the constitution must not be suspended because there are state security issues.

"No law allows anybody to grab a suspect in a their night clothes and take them to an undisclosed location and spend weeks without your family, lawyers or courts knowing were you are," said Mtetwa.

Of the conditions of Mukoko and other opposition activists who claim to have been tortured during their detention Mtetwa said medical doctors had examined them and "confirmed that they were indeed tortured. So it is crucial that they are taken to a clinic with proper facilities as a matter of urgency."

The activists are in police custody after an appeal against a High Court ruling last week that they should be released to a private clinic.

In the wake of Mukoko's abduction, opposition Movement for Democratic Change leader Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened to pull out of the power-sharing deal he signed with Mugabe in September unless Mukoko and other detainees were released by December 31.

The power-sharing deal which will keep Mugabe as the president while Tsvangirai becomes prime minister follows a hotly-disputed presidential run-off in June which was marred by more than 200 deaths mainly targeting the opposition supporters. (dpa)