Zimbabwe's government defended its decision to briefly detain the US ambassador, saying on Friday the envoy was lucky to be alive after straying into a secure zone near President Robert Mugabe's residence.
Zimbabwe state television reported on Thursday that US ambassador Christopher Dell was held by the Presidential Guard on Monday after entering a restricted area at the National Botanic Gardens near Mugabe's official Harare residence.
"The ambassador must consider himself very lucky that he is dealing with a professional army that the Zimbabwe National Army is," Mugabe's spokesman George Charamba said in a statement published by state media on Friday.
"Elsewhere, and definitely in America, he would have been a dead man. His adventure is really dangerous."
The Zimbabwe government said it sent a letter of protest to the US embassy over what it called "a calculated disregard of the rules governing relations between states ... clearly intended to provoke an unwarranted diplomatic incident".
Dell was not available for comment but the US embassy said in a statement he had been held for over an hour. "During an October 10 recreational visit to National Botanical Gardens in Harare Ambassador Chris Dell inadvertently wandered into a poorly marked military area located in the middle of the of the park," it said.