67 to face coup charges - Zim

2004-03-12 13:53

Harare - Sixty-seven men being held in Harare and accused of planning a coup in Equatorial Guinea will face charges of attempting to overthrow a sovereign government, Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi announced on Friday.

"The charges are quite clear, they were bent on actually destabilising an independent country, a sovereign country and we are bound by the African Union charter and the UN charter to protect other states from any aggression," he told a press conference in Harare.

Mohadi, who spoke shortly after a delegation from Equatorial Guinea held talks with President Robert Mugabe at his official residence in the capital, said it was unlikely that the 67 would appear before the courts on Friday as expected.

Zimbabwe detained an aircraft with 64 suspected mercenaries aboard, plus three men who came to meet them on Sunday at Harare International Airport after the flight came in from South Africa.

The Zimbabwean government has said these men were heading to Equatorial Guinea, an oil-rich tropical state on the Gulf of Guinea, to join 15 other coup plotters arrested there.

- AFP