Exiled Zimbabwe opposition leader Roy Bennett and four other people were killed in a helicopter crash in a remote northern part of the U.S. state of New Mexico, officials and his political party said on Thursday.
The crash of a private Huey helicopter in rugged terrain near Raton, New Mexico, on Wednesday evening killed Bennett, 60, along with his wife, Heather Bennett, 55, James Coleman Dodd, 57, of Colorado, Charles Ryland Burnett, 61, of Texas and Paul Cobb, 67, of Texas, New Mexico State Police said.
Bennett, a former treasurer general of the opposition MDC party, was an important figure in Zimbabwean politics and served time in prison under former President Robert Mugabe. He recently told CNN that his country would never again let itself be ruled by a dictatorship.
The party described Bennett as a charismatic grassroots politician and successful farmer in the country's eastern Chimanimani District. He was fluent in Zimbabwe's Shona language, it said, and had helped hundreds of impoverished villagers pay school fees for their children.
The National Transportation Safety Board said it was investigating the crash 15 miles (24 km) east of Raton.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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