Zimbabwe court appearance by British mercenary postponed (Roundup)

Apr 13, 2007, 15:47 GMT

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.