The South African criminal case against alleged coup plotter Mark Thatcher has been postponed to April 8 next year after a brief appearance in a Wynberg court on Thursday.
Alan Bruce-Brand, a member of Thatcher’s legal team, said on Thursday that the conditions under which Thatcher had been released were extended, including a R2-million surety.
Thatcher is charged with contravening the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, which prohibits South Africans from acting as mercenaries.
On Wednesday the Cape High Court rejected Thatcher’s bid to quash a planned questioning session by Equatorial Guinea prosecutors.
His lawyers had argued that the questioning, scheduled to take place before a Cape Town magistrate on Friday, violated Thatcher’s constitutional rights to silence and against self-incrimination. He was ordered to pay the costs of the application.
The Equatorial Guinea prosecutors believe Thatcher helped finance a failed bid to topple the central African country’s president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, in March this year.
They have filed two separate lists of questions, many of them related to Thatcher’s relationship to mercenary boss Simon Mann, now serving time in a Zimbabwe jail, and alleged mercenary Nick du Toit.
Du Toit is one of 26 people being tried in Equatorial Guinea in connection with the coup bid.
Last week the prosecutors named Thatcher, who lives in Cape Town, as a 27th co-accused, and said he would be tried in absentia. – Sapa