OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Monday 10.00pm.
A ZAMBIAN high court judge who is trying 77 coup plot suspects has threatend to release all the accused if the Zambian government fails to improve their prison conditions, Zambian press reports said on Monday.
Prosecution lawyers were on Saturday ordered by Judge Japhet Banda to arrange improvement of living conditions for the 75 soldiers and two civilians charged with treason, or have them released.
Zambian prisons, which were built in Colonial days, are overcrowded, lack proper sanitation, and suffer shortages of food, with prisoners reportedly forced to eat snakes and owls that wander into their cells.
The treason trial which got underway early in June has been adjourned several times due to the ill health of many suspects who have suffered from tuberculosis and other respiratory diseases.
Banda said the conditions the suspects were living in are beyond belief, and he has ordered the state to drastically improve the plight of the suspects.
The group was accused last October of trying to overthrow the Zambian government of President Frederick Chiluba.
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