Mbeki tells of mercenary talks

2004-03-11 17:02

Mafikeng - President Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday Equatorial Guinea had asked him for help in the trial of suspected coup plotters during a midnight meeting in Pretoria.

Mbeki, speaking while campaigning in this North West town, said visiting officials asked for South Africa's help to ensure that the trial of 15 men arrested in the small central African state would be transparent and fair.

"It was a direct request," Mbeki was quoted by Sapa as saying. He added that the officials were "working" with Foreign Minister Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma on the issue.

Meanwhile, Zimbabwe is still holding an aircraft and 64 suspected mercenaries, plus three men who came to meet them at Harare International Airport on Sunday after the plane arrived from South Africa.

The Zimbabwean government claims the men were heading for Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich tropical state partly on the African mainland and part islands in the Gulf of Guinea, to join other coup plotters.

Forbidden to operate as mercenaries

Mbeki said some of the men arrested in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea were known to South African security organisations and some were former apartheid-era South African Defence Force (SADF) members.

South Africa would definitely charge any of the men who was suspected of contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act of 1998, said Mbeki. It forbids citizens to operate as mercenaries.

Foreign ministry spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa said Equatorial Guinean deputy foreign minister José Esono Micha met Dlamini-Zuma to discuss developments after the arrest of the 15 suspects.

Mamoepa told journalists that Esono met Dlamini-Zuma in Pretoria on Thursday, after the meeting with Mbeki, to discuss the detention of the men, some of whom are believed to be South African.

The leader of the group, a man named as Nick du Toit, 48, reportedly from South Africa, told national television in Equatorial Guinea that the plotters planned to force President Teodoro Obiang Nguema into exile in Spain.

No prisoner-transfer agreement

Mbeki said no request had been received from Zimbabwe, where 67 other suspected mercenaries were also facing charges.

South Africans are being detained in both Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea and will face trial and prison terms in those countries.

"We have no prisoner-transfer agreement with any country," said Mamoepa earlier on Thursday.

"As all South Africans arrested in foreign countries, they would have to face the laws of those countries should it turn out that they were mercenaries," he said.

"We do, however, offer consular services. But, bringing them back would be out of the question."

- AFP