Sixty-four suspected mercenaries allegedly hired to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, along with their three-man flight crew, were expected to make sworn statements on Friday to Zimbabwe police, their lawyer said.
The routine procedure requires that they confirm their identities and respond to the accusations against them before they can be brought to court, said attorney Jonathan Samkange.
The government has said it is preparing charges under Zimbabwe’s aviation, firearms and immigration laws against the men, who were arrested on Sunday when their ageing Boeing 727 stopped at Harare International airport.
Foreign Affairs Minister Stan Mudenge has said they could face the death penalty, but none of the charges mentioned by the attorney general on Thursday is a capital offense.
Fifteen other alleged mercenaries were arrested in Equatorial Guinea on Tuesday, also on suspicion of plotting to overthrow the government.
Samkange, who was instructed to represent the men detained in Zimbabwe by a South African law firm, is still waiting for police permission to visit his clients at Chikurubi maximum security prison outside the capital, Harare.
Zimbabwe state radio said Guinea’s Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister, Jose Esono Micha, was scheduled to meet with security authorities in Harare on Friday. He is heading an eight-man delegation from the tiny West African country.
Zimbabwe investigators claim that Equatorial Guinea’s rebel leader, Severo Moto, offered the suspected mercenaries $1,8-million and oil rights for overthrowing President Teodoro Obiang Ngeuma.
Zimbabwe says they were also planning to supply guns and other assistance to rebels in eastern Congo.
Zimbabwe Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi has claimed the CIA, together with British and Spanish intelligence agencies, had persuaded Equatorial Guinea’s police and military chiefs to cooperate with the coup plotters by promising them Cabinet posts in the new government. The agencies also were supplying the plotters with communications equipment, he said.
A United States intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said ”the notion that the US government is involved is absurd”.
South Africans account for 20 of the 64 men detained in Zimbabwe, with most of the others from Namibia and Angola.
The South Africans, who include former members of the South African military, could also face anti-mercenary charges at home, South African President Thabo Mbeki said Thursday.
Details of the coup plot came from an alleged co-conspirator who was detained on Sunday as he waited to meet the plane, Mohadi said. He has been identified as Simon Mann, a British agent allegedly involved in efforts to buy weapons from Zimbabwe’s state arms maker.
Angolan Foreign Affairs Minister Joao Miranda has said his government believes the suspects once belonged to the Buffalo Battalion, a disbanded South African army unit composed of foreign soldiers, many of them from Portuguese-speaking countries. The unit fought in Namibia and Angola in the 1970s and 1980s.
Along with the plane, Zimbabwe authorities seized what they called ”military materials” — including satellite telephones, radios, backpacks, hiking boots, bolt cutters and an inflatable raft. There were no reports of weapons on the plane.
The plane’s registration number is assigned to Dodson Aviation of Ottawa, Kansas, in the US. However, the company said it sold the aircraft about a week ago. — Sapa-AP