Togo's top opposition party on Sunday denounced the weekend arrest of one of its leading figures, accusing the government of seeking to "decapitate" the movement. Brigitte Adjamagbo-Johnson, who in 2010 became the first woman to run for president in the West African state of eight million people, was arrested Saturday for "attacking the security of the state", according to a government prosecutor. Gerard Djossou, another member of her Dynamique Monseigneur Kpodzro (DMK) party, had been arrested the day before. The party condemned the arrests, describing them as a "manoeuvre whose goal is nothing less than to decapitate the movement", complaining in a statement of "intimidation and judicial harassment". The arrests follow an investigation which revealed opposition "documents that contained a plan to destabilise the country", prosecutor Essolissam Poyodi said in a televised address. A police search of Djossou's home "uncovered a plan to commit violent acts" during a banned protest this Saturday, Poyodi added. The opposition had called for a march in the capital Lome to protest against February election results but it was cancelled by the government which cited the coronavirus risk. The DMK said it would hold "outgoing" President Faure Gnassingbe "personally responsible" for the fate of the two arrested members. On Friday four members of the DMK -- whose presidential candidate Agbeyome Kodjo was runner-up in the election that handed Gnassingbe a fourth term -- met with the ambassadors of the so-called Group of Five -- the United States, France, Germany, the EU and the UN, the party said. It alleged that as they left the meeting Djossou was roughed up and "kidnapped" by unidentified men before being taken into custody. Adjamagbo-Johnson was arrested in turn when she went to visit him. The party's flagbearer, former prime minister Agbeyome Kodjo, scored nearly 20 percent in the election against nearly 71 percent for Gnassingbe in results it refuses to accept. Adjamagbo-Johnson withdrew her 2010 presidential candidacy fearing fraud. Gnassingbe who took over in 2005 following the death of his father Gnassingbe Eyadema, who ruled the former French colony for 38 years. The younger Gnassingbe went on to win re-election three times, with the opposition crying foul each time. ek/gd/jj