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HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe opposition and media groups condemned on Saturday the expulsion of a U.S. journalist who had worked in the country for 23 years, and criticized authorities for ignoring a court order barring his deportation.

Andrew Meldrum, a correspondent for Britain's Guardian newspaper, was put on a plane bound for London on Friday night despite a judge's ruling hours earlier ordering his release.

Meldrum, 51, was the fourth foreign journalist to be thrown out of Zimbabwe in the past two years and had been accused by the government of driving a hate campaign against President Robert Mugabe as the country sinks deeper into crisis.

"What happened to Meldrum is deplorable, not only because we believe that this is part of the government's long running campaign against press freedom, but also because the government ignored court orders," said a spokesman for the Media Institute of Southern Africa (MISA) in Harare.

Meldrum's deportation came after Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi sent a certificate to the High Court, saying he had sanctioned his expulsion as an "undesirable immigrant" under the country's security laws.

Meldrum, who had permanent residency in Zimbabwe, was one of more than a dozen reporters in the country who were arrested last year under tough media laws.

Critics say the laws, adopted after Mugabe's controversial re-election last year, were designed to stifle press freedom but the government says they are to restore professionalism in journalism.

Meldrum had been fighting a deportation order issued last year after he was acquitted of charges of publishing a false story.

Zimbabwe's opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) denounced Meldrum's expulsion as "another desperate move" to silence critics of the embattled Mugabe government.

"The regime should realize that expelling journalists who write the truth simply serves to expose the sheer level of tyranny and undemocratic practices that they are perpetrating in Zimbabwe," the MDC said in a statement.