HARARE -- A U.S. journalist working in Zimbabwe for Britain's **Guardian** newspaper was deported on Friday, despite a high court order preventing immigration officials from carrying out the expulsion.

Immigration officials escorted Andrew Meldrum to an Air Zimbabwe plane bound for London as his lawyer battled to serve a court order on immigration officials to stop his deportation.

"He was escorted by two immigration officials to an Air Zimbabwe plane going to London. He got onto the plane," said a Reuters reporter who was at the airport.

Meldrum was among a handful of foreign journalists working in Zimbabwe and has been accused of driving a hate campaign against President Robert Mugabe.

His deportation came hours after Judge Charles Hungwe issued an order against his deportation and ordered his release.

"Certainly I am convinced that there is lack of good faith being displayed by the respondents (immigration authorities)," Hungwe said.

In London, the **Guardian** editor denounced the expulsion order.

"The Zimbabwean authorities have been persecuting Andrew for the last 12 months and their clear determination to deport him can only be interpreted as a concerted effort to stifle any free press within the country," Alan Rusbridger said.

Lawyer Beatrice Mtetwa, who represented for Meldrum, said she had handed over the court order to immigration officials, but they ignored it.

"They are clearly in contempt of court," she said as immigration officials slammed doors and pushed her out of the departure lounge at the Harare International Airport.

Meldrum's wife Delores said her husband told her by cellular telephone that immigration officials had abused him.

"He told me that the immigration officials had covered him with a jacket, hooded-style, and drove him around a dirt road. When they got to the airport he was locked up in an underground room," she told Reuters.

Meldrum, who has worked in the Southern African country for more than 20 years, had been fighting a deportation order issued last year after he was acquitted of charges of publishing a false story.

He is one of several journalists taken to court since Mugabe's government passed tough media laws last year. Critics say the laws, adopted after Mugabe's controversial reelection last year, were designed to stifle press freedom but the government says they are meant to restore professionalism in journalism.

Last week, Zimbabwe's Supreme Court struck down provisions of the laws which made it an offense to publish "falsehoods", after the government conceded they were unconstitutional.