Eight South Africans suspected of involvement in a planned coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea had their trial set down on Friday for next year in the Pretoria Regional Court.
During a brief appearance in the morning, their trial date was set for January 16 to February 3.
Raymond Archer, Victor Dracula, Louis du Preez, Errol Harris, Mzanga Kashama, Neves Matias, Maitre Ruakuluka and Simon Witherspoon face charges of contravening the Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act. They are out on warning.
The men are part of a group of 61 that returned to South Africa in May after spending more than a year in a Zimbabwean prison. South African authorities have declined to prosecute the rest.
The 61 were convicted in Zimbabwe of violating immigration, aviation, firearms and security laws, related to an alleged plot to topple the government of Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
They were among 70 people arrested in March last year when they landed at Harare International airport, allegedly to refuel and pick up military equipment. They all had South African passports.
Zimbabwean authorities claimed they were on their way to join 15 other suspected mercenaries, including eight South Africans, arrested in Equatorial Guinea at about the same time.
Alleged coup leader Simon Mann and two pilots remain in prison in Zimbabwe, while the alleged mercenaries in Equatorial Guinea are serving long prison sentences.
Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of former United Kingdom prime minister Margaret Thatcher, pleaded guilty last year in South Africa for helping, unwittingly, to finance the coup attempt. He paid a fine and received a suspended sentence.
Lawyer Alwyn Griebenow told reporters outside the court on Friday there is no case against his clients.
Harris apparently believed he had been hired to build a new prison in Equatorial Guinea, while Archer was drawn into the exercise two hours before the mercenaries’ plane left Wonderboom.
He also alleged that Du Preez and Witherspoon were told the coup ”had the backing of the governments of South Africa, Britain, the United States and Spain”.
They were told by Mann and alleged co-conspirator Harry Carelse ”that President Thabo Mbeki was looking forward to greeting the new president of Equatorial Guinea”, Griebenow claimed.
According to the charge sheet, the plot was engineered between September 2003 and March 2004 during meetings at a variety of venues, including the Wimpy restaurant in Centurion, the Hotel 224 in Pretoria, the Sandton Towers hotel, Bethlehem in the Free State, Zimbabwe, Equatorial Guinea and the Canary Islands.
The men allegedly planned to provide support for a coup d’état to an undisclosed ”group or entity”.
The charge sheet also accuses them of flying from South Africa in February and March last year to acquire weapons, and says they acted with common purpose throughout.
Four of the men are to make an interim court appearance on July 22 for their legal team to be supplied with the charge sheet and statements in the docket. — Sapa