Harare - A court appearance by British mercenary Simon Mann
will take place next week at the maximum security prison outside the
Zimbabwean capital where he has spent the last three years behind
bars, his lawyer said.
Mann had been expected to give evidence Friday in the Harare
magistrates court, but proceedings were delayed after the state
failed to bring him from Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison, about 20
kilometres from the city centre, lawyer Jonathan Samkange said.
The court hearing, in which Equatorial Guinea is applying to have
the former SAS officer extradited to Malabo to face charges of
plotting to topple the government, will instead take place at
Chikurubi next Thursday, Samkange told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa in
a telephone interview.
Mann was arrested in Harare in March 2004 along with dozens of
other suspected soldiers of fortune. The Zimbabwe government accused
them of being en route to topple the government of President Teodoro
Obiang Nguema, but the men denied this.
Most of Mann's alleged accomplices were released two years ago
after serving year-long jail terms for minor immigration offences,
the only ones the Zimbabwean authorities could pin on them.
Mann, who was convicted of more serious security and firearms
offences, is due to be released next month after having served two-
thirds of a four-year jail term.
The government of Equatorial Guinea began its application to have
the former British SAS commando extradited in February.
Next week's court hearing at the prison is not unusual. Prison
authorities three years ago refused to take Mann and his accomplices
to a conventional court building in the city centre, saying they were
a high-security risk.
Instead, they turned a hall inside the prison into a makeshift
courtroom attended by journalists and family members of the detained
men.
'What the defence will be concentrating on [on Thursday] is that
if he [Mann] is sent to Equatorial Guinea he will be tortured and
won't get a fair trial,' his defence lawyer Samkange said.
In February Equatorial Guinea's attorney general claimed in court
that Mann would receive an open and fair trial in his country and
that Malabo's courts would not impose the death penalty in the case
of a conviction.
Under the central African country's laws, plotting to overthrow
the government is punishable by the death penalty or a 30-year jail
term.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
Your Talkback on this Story