Some charges against 'mercenaries' dropped

Harare - Seventy suspected mercenaries accused of plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea were remanded in custody on Tuesday after their first appearance at an improvised court room at the maximum security jail where they are being held.

Dressed in green prison shorts and shirts, the men sat grimly on wooden benches set up in a room behind 10-metre-high walls and razor wire at Chikurubi prison. Most were manacled and shackled.

Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe presided from behind a wooden table at the front of the room.

The suspects - who include South Africans, Namibians, Angolans, Congolese, a Zimbabwean and a Briton - were arrested when their ageing Boeing 727 landed at Harare International Airport on March 7. Most are former members of South Africa's apartheid-era military forces.

http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=68&art_id=qw1080050044235B253&set_id=1

Front page has a pic of them in cuffs and shorts.
http://www.iol.co.za/