Harare/Johannesburg - Zimbabwe's Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled that a prominent human rights activist being held on charges of recruiting people for insurgency training and terrorist bombings be taken to a private clinic.

Chief Justice Godfrey Chidyausiku also deemed urgent the case, in which Jestina Mukoko of the Zimbabwe Peace Project was challenging her detention and the charges brought against her.

"The applicant must be afforded medical attention as a matter of urgency," Chidyausiku said.

Mukoko and 30 other activists - mainly from the opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) party were being detained following their arrests between October and December.

The group had applied to the Supreme Court for the right to medical treatment, claiming they had been kidnapped by state agents and tortured in detention and forced to admit to having trained or recruited people for a plot to topple the government of President Robert Mugabe.

The state had challenged a High Court ordering that she and her fellow defendants be taken to a private clinic for treatment, saying that the prison clinic had facilities to treat them.

Mukoko was taken from her home in Norton, some 40 kilometres south-west of the capital Harare, in a dawn raid on December 3. Her whereabouts remained unknown, with police saying they were investigating a kidnapping, until December 24, when she was brought before court.

The same day, the 30 activists - who alleged they were abducted by state agents in October - also appeared in court. A two-year-old child of two of the detainees was on Wednesday released after 76 days in the custody of police and prison authorities.

MDC spokesman Nelson Chamisa said the child had been "assaulted and denied food and medical attention by his captors."

MDC leader Morgan Tsvangirai has threatened to pull out of a power-sharing signed with Mugabe's government in September over its treatment of the activists. (dpa)