Activist tells of brain damage

Peter Tatchell, the Australian-born British human rights campaigner, revealed yesterday that he has brain damage from being beaten first by Robert Mugabe's bodyguards and later by Russian neo-Nazis.

Tatchell, 57, said his condition was so severe that he has stood down from his role as Green Party candidate in Oxford East and put his political activity on hold after doctors advised rest.

He said yesterday that it was a "painful, distressing decision", but added: "You haven't heard the last of me yet."

In 2001, he attempted to make a citizen's arrest when Mugabe was in Brussels. He got as far as saying that he was arresting the Zimbabwean President for civil rights abuse when the bodyguards set on him.

They attacked him in a hotel lobby and followed him out into the street, where they threatened to kill him and attacked him twice more, knocking him unconscious. For several days he suffered from numbness and some paralysis down his left side, which doctors identified as symptoms of severe concussion.

In May 2007, Tatchell joined a Gay Pride march in Moscow, which was attacked by a right-wing gang while the police looked on. He was punched in the face, thrown to the ground and kicked by youths shouting "sodomy" and "sodomite".

The punch has permanently affected the vision in his right eye. "But in some ways I was lucky, because an environmental camp was attacked later by people who I was told were from the same group. They killed one person and put 15 in hospital," he said.

His injuries were compounded on a campaign trip for the Greens in Devon in July when the campaign bus braked suddenly and he was thrown forward, hitting his head on a metal rail.

" ... The medical advice is that if I slow down and reduce my workload my condition may improve in a year or so. On the downside, I am unlikely to ever recover fully. Some of the damage is probably permanent.

"I don't regret a thing. Getting a thrashing and brain injuries was not what I had expected or wanted, but I was aware of the risks."

- INDEPENDENT