The High Court in Zimbabwe yesterday delayed for five days the government-ordered expulsions of two foreign journalists, as Harare came under fire for its continuing attacks on the media.
The court also ordered police not to harass the two journalists, BBC correspondent Joseph Winter and Uruguayan Mercedes Sayagues - who writes for South Africa's Mail And Guardian newspaper - before their departure.
On Saturday Winter and Sayagues were both given 24 hours to leave Zimbabwe after the government claimed their employment permits had expired.
Overnight, Winter fled with his family to the British High Commission after an unknown gang tried to break into his garden flat. Police later forcefully entered the premises, neighbours said.
The British government launched a scathing attack yesterday on Harare over the affair.
"I am extremely concerned about the intimidation of and attempt to expel Mr Winter from Zimbabwe," the Foreign Office Minister, Mr Brian Wilson, said in a statement.
"Expelling journalists cannot prevent the world from seeing what is happening in Zimbabwe or anywhere else," he said, adding that the Zimbabwe government had in recent weeks also begun putting political pressure on judges and magistrates.
The Zimbabwe Union of Journalists (ZUJ) also criticised the expulsions, saying the treatment of the two reporters was "unacceptable" and was another example of efforts by the government "to destroy press freedom."
Winter and Sayagues succeeded yesterday in an urgent application in the High Court here to have their expulsions delayed until Friday.
"The order gives us until the 23rd of February to stay in the country and in the meantime state officials have been ordered to stop interfering with us," Winter said.
The Harare government said Winter was being expelled because his employment permit has expired and a renewal issued last month is invalid.
Sayagues was initially barred from re-entering the country Saturday when she returned from a two-day visit to South Africa. She was eventually allowed in after she pleaded that she wanted to collect her daughter whom she had left behind.
ZUJ secretary general, Mr Basildon Peta, said the expulsions were "part of a cocktail of measures that they (the authorities) have put together to destroy effective journalism in Zimbabwe".
"Unfortunately it will reinforce the now widely-held view that Zimbabwe is run by tyrants and a result we will have more enemies than friends," Mr Peta said.
The attack on Winter's house and the expulsion orders come amid an onslaught on the media and the opposition which, according to analysts, is linked to next year's presidential elections which President Robert Mugabe fears he may lose.
The printing presses of the privately-owned newspaper the Daily News were bombed at the end of January, while local reporters have been assaulted and harassed.
Mr Mugabe has accused the foreign and local independent media of plotting to destabilise the country.
On Friday, the leader of the main opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC), Mr Morgan Tsvangirai, was formally charged with inciting violence during a speech he made last year.
Legislative elections last June saw the ruling party face its first ever serious opposition when it lost nearly half of the contested 120 seats to the MDC.