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Zimbabwe to Charge 'Mercenaries' with Plotting

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  • Zimbabwe to Charge 'Mercenaries' with Plotting

    Reuters
    March 12 2004

    Zimbabwe to Charge 'Mercenaries' with Plotting

    By Cris Chinaka

    HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe said on Friday it will charge dozens of
    mercenary suspects with trying to destabilize a sovereign state and
    said the detainees were talking about their purported plot to stage a
    coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea.

    Zimbabwe detained more than 60 men after their Boeing 727 was seized
    in Harare on Sunday, and Equatorial Guinea -- sub-Saharan Africa's
    third largest oil producer -- arrested another smaller group who said
    were an advance party.

    "The charges are quite clear... they include destabilizing an
    independent and sovereign government and our statutes, and the AU
    (African Union), forbid that," Zimbabwean Home Affairs Minister Kembo
    Mohadi told reporters after President Robert Mugabe met a visiting
    delegation from Equatorial Guinea.

    Asked whether the suspects were cooperating with the investigation,
    Mohadi said: "They are talking."

    The plane's operator says the group was due to provide legitimate
    mine security in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

    Zimbabwe has said those it detained, mainly South Africans, Angolans
    and Namibians, may face the death penalty.

    Visiting Harare on Friday, Equatorial Guinea's Justice Minister Ruben
    Maye Nsue Mangue said the 20 men detained in his nation's capital
    Malabo were six Armenians, four Angolans with South African
    passports, four Kazakhs, one German and five former "high-ranking"
    South African military personnel.

    "They have been sent by Western countries, companies. They have
    received an advance of $5 million and they were promised another $5
    million afterwards," he said, adding the plot had been to abduct
    President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and take him to Equatorial
    Guinea's former ruler Spain.

    Zimbabwe, battling international sanctions spearheaded by Britain and
    the United States, accused spy agencies of those countries on
    Wednesday of aiding the alleged plot against Obiang in conjunction
    with the Spanish secret service.

    "The United States Government has protested to the Government of
    Zimbabwe concerning the outlandish and inaccurate allegations...
    about U.S. involvement with a purported mercenary operation," the
    U.S. embassy in Harare said in a statement on Friday. Britain and
    Spain have also issued denials.

    No detainee has yet appeared in court, but authorities in Malabo
    presented Nick du Toit -- who defense sources say is a former member
    of a South Africa's special forces -- to diplomats on Tuesday as the
    leader of the advance party.
    A lawyer hired by a South African firm to represent the Harare
    detainees was due to meet them on Friday, but Mohadi said it was
    unlikely they would appear in court then. Legal sources said they can
    be held for two weeks before a court hearing.

    Zimbabwe's official Herald newspaper quoted acting Attorney General
    Bharat Patel as saying the group's leaders -- among them men
    identified as Briton Simon Mann and South African Simon Witherspoon
    -- could be charged separately from the rest.

    Radio Zimbabwe said most of the men, a mixed group of blacks and
    whites, had South African passports, some of them fake.

    South Africa's Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma said officials
    were considering bringing the South Africans in the group home to
    face trial under laws banning mercenary activity.

    "We are discussing that but we are not opposed to them facing trial
    where they committed the crime," Dlamini-Zuma told SABC radio on
    Friday. South Africa's mercenary laws aim to shake its image as a
    supplier of "dogs of war" to African conflicts.

    "The South African government is making the point that they are very
    serious about rooting this out -- it's very much in line with the
    African Union and its Peace and Security Council," said Henri
    Boschoff of Pretoria's Institute of Security Studies.

    "It's about peace -- if you have lots of mercenaries running around,
    you're not going to get it," Boschoff told Reuters.
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