Zim 62: No welcome party
2005-05-15 13:27
Johannesburg - The wife of Kenneth Pain, one of 62 South African men convicted of plotting to overthrow the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, said on Sunday there would be no welcome home party for her husband.
"My husband is very tired right now and so am I. He has been travelling for nine hours and I have had to wait here since last night.
"So I think we will leave this for a couple of days and maybe do it a bit later," said Marge Pain. She had been waiting at the Beit Bridge border post since Saturday night for her husband to arrive from Harare.
She said the family was obviously excited to have their father home.
"I never thought I'd see the end of this," said Pain who commented on how thin her husband looked.
She asked that the media leave her husband alone for now to give him time to rest and the family "to do some catching up" with the man who had not been home for over a year.
A fiancée of one of the 62 said on Sunday that the first three men released by immigration officials at the Beit Bridge border post were "pale" and "not looking good".
"They are not looking good I tell you. They look pale and tired and the atmosphere here is very emotional," said Karen, who was waiting for her fiancee Errol Harris to be released by immigration officials.
She said she had no idea how long they will have to wait for the rest of the group to come through.
The 62 were among 70 men arrested in March last year when their aircraft landed at Harare's international airport in Zimbabwe to pick up weapons.
Zimbabwean authorities alleged the guns were to be used to unseat Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
He and the others were arrested and served their sentence in Harare's Chikurubi maximum prison.
However, Briton Simon Mann who is the suspected mastermind of the coup plot, will remain behind bars where he is serving a four-year jail sentence.
He is facing more serious charges of breaching firearms laws.
French news agency AFP quoted a Scorpions spokesperson as saying that the men would continue to be investigated under South Africa's anti-mercenary laws but that "there were no immediate plans to arrest anybody."
- SAPA