Geezah
03-24-2004, 02:44 PM
A former SAS officer and dozens of men he is accused of commanding were brought before a magistrate in Zimbabwe's maximum security prison yesterday and told they faced life imprisonment if convicted of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea.
Simon Mann was marched to the remand hearing through the Chikurubi complex at the head of the 70 men, most of them manacled.
It was his first public appearance since his arrest at Harare airport on March 7. He was held with two colleagues as they waited for the arrival from South Africa of a Boeing 727 with a cargo of battle-hardened men, most of whom had fought in South Africa's border wars during the apartheid era.
Mann, an old Etonian with dual British and South African citizenship, was said to have been trapped after being kept under surveillance following his negotiations for a shipment of weapons. He made no comment after the brief proceedings.
The state prosecutor accused him of entering into a contract with the Guinean opposition leader Severo Moto, who lives in Spain, "to assist in toppling" President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.
Simon Mann was marched to the remand hearing through the Chikurubi complex at the head of the 70 men, most of them manacled.
It was his first public appearance since his arrest at Harare airport on March 7. He was held with two colleagues as they waited for the arrival from South Africa of a Boeing 727 with a cargo of battle-hardened men, most of whom had fought in South Africa's border wars during the apartheid era.
Mann, an old Etonian with dual British and South African citizenship, was said to have been trapped after being kept under surveillance following his negotiations for a shipment of weapons. He made no comment after the brief proceedings.
The state prosecutor accused him of entering into a contract with the Guinean opposition leader Severo Moto, who lives in Spain, "to assist in toppling" President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.