Alleged mercenaries Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn have been charged for contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act.
“They have been charged by the Scorpions. They will receive summonses to appear in court sometime next week,” their lawyer, Alwyn Griebenow, said on Monday.
Griebenow and his clients spent Monday morning in a meeting with the Scorpions’ legal team in Pretoria.
“My clients are happy with the outcome of this morning’s meeting,” he said.
Carlse and Horn arrived home from Zimbabwe on Saturday after a Harare court acquitted them on weapons charges on Friday.
They spent six months at Chikurubi prison with 68 other alleged mercenaries arrested on March 7 at Harare International airport.
The group had allegedly stopped off in Harare to purchase weapons to be used in an alleged coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea.
Zimbabwean prosecutors said Carlse and Horn were hired to inspect a consignment of weapons intended to be used in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea. They maintained the weapons were for a security job at a mining operation in the war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.
Former British Special Forces operative and alleged coup leader Simon Mann was convicted of trying to buy weapons from Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer and faces up to 10 years in prison. — Sapa
Forsyth’s fiction close to the facts
Trial resumes in Equatorial Guinea