Two South African pilots jailed in Zimbabwe over their alleged involvement in a plot to overthrow the government in Equatorial Guinea will only be released at the weekend, their lawyer said on Friday.
Lawyer Alwyn Griebenow said he was told by officials in Zimbabwe that pilots Jaap-Niel Steyl and Hendrik Jacobus Hamman would be released on Sunday and not on Friday as earlier expected.
”They will be released at the weekend. The two-thirds of the sentence only expires on Sunday,” said Griebenow.
Steyl and Hamman were arrested along with 68 others in March last year when they landed a Boeing 727 in Harare to pick up an assortment of weapons that the authorities here said were to be used to stage a coup in Equatorial Guinea.
Most of the men were sentenced to year-long jail terms last September after they were convicted of minor immigration offences.
They were released in May and deported back to South Africa after serving a mandatory two-thirds of their jail terms.
But Steyl and Hamman were slapped with 16-month sentences for violating Zimbabwe’s aviation and immigration laws. Those sentences expire this month and Griebenow said they too would be deported.
”They’ll either be bussed down to Beitbridge [Zimbabwe’s border with South Africa] or they’ll be flown out,” he said. He said the two men would face charges back home under South Africa’s anti-mercenary laws.
The alleged ringleader of the group, Briton Simon Mann is still in jail serving a four-year jail sentence after he was convicted of more serious firearms and security offences.
During their trial last year the men denied involvement in a coup plot and said they were on their way to guard diamond mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). – Sapa-DPA