The Zimbabwe High Court on Wednesday reduced by four months the sentences of a group of suspected mercenaries jailed over an alleged coup plot in the oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea, a court official said.
”I can confirm that the sentences of the suspected mercenaries and the two pilots have been reduced by four months,” said a court source.
Judge Yunus Omerjee gave no reasons when he handed down his ruling in an application made by the suspected mercenaries’ lawyers late last year.
”If my calculations are right, the men should be released immediately,” said their South African-based lawyer Alwyn Griebenow.
Last year, a lower court jailed the group of men, including former British soldier Simon Mann, on various convictions for breaching Zimbabwe’s aviation, immigration, firearms and security laws.
Mann was slapped with a seven-year jail term later reduced to four years, while two pilots who flew a plane into Harare to collect arms got 16 months and the rest were jailed for 12 months.
Griebenow said the men serving the one-year term now only had to serve eight months, which ends on May 10. But the men also qualify for a one-third remission of sentence provided for well-behaved prisoners under Zimbabwean laws. Coupled with this reduction, all the men — except the two pilots who received longer jail terms — should be released immediately.
The court official said the men would be freed into the custody of Zimbabwe’s immigration department for deportation to South Africa since they have been declared illegal immigrants.
Mann, a former member of Britain’s crack Special Air Services (SAS) force, along with 69 others, were arrested on March 7 last year at the Harare International airport en route to Equatorial Guinea.
They were accused of being on their way to join an advance party in the West African state of Equatorial Guinea in a plot to overthrow longtime leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema. The men denied the charges, claiming they were on their way to
the Democratic Republic of Congo to guard mines.
British businessman Mark Thatcher who was accused of partly financing the alleged plot, was recently fined by a South African court for violating its anti-mercenary laws and paid a R3-million fine. – Sapa-AFP