TWO suspected mercenaries accused of plotting a coup d’état in Equatorial Guinea claimed yesterday that they were stripped, beaten and forced to sleep in leg-irons during six months of detention in a Zimbabwe jail.
Harry Carlse and Lourens Horn were arrested at Harare international airport in March as they awaited an aircraft carrying 67 other South Africans who were due to pick up arms and ammunition.
The two men were freed from the maximum-security Chikurubi prison on Friday after being acquitted on a charge of attempting to purchase dangerous weapons. They are expected to be questioned by South African police today.
Simon Mann, the former SAS officer who was also waiting at the airport and is alleged to have organised the operation, was found guilty of the charge and faces up to ten years in jail when he is sentenced on September 10.
Mr Horn, 30, said that the 70 prisoners had been beaten by police for three weeks until they were allowed to see their lawyers. “There was physical torture as well as mental torture,” he said. “They said if we refused to make a statement they would give us electric shocks.”
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Mr Carlse, 40, confirmed the allegations. “I was stripped naked and beaten with a stick. I slept in leg-irons for a week and a half,” he said.
The men, who were met at Johannesburg international airport on Saturday by jubilant relatives, said that the living conditions at the jail were dire. They claimed that prisoners survived on a diet of porridge and cabbage, and that overcrowding and disease were rife.
“You could go without (running) water for two weeks, so you couldn’t flush the toilet,” Mr Horn said.
The botched coup attempt has attracted international attention after the arrest at his home in Cape Town last week of Sir Mark Thatcher, the 51-year-old son of the former Conservative Prime Minister.
Sir Mark, a close friend of Mr Mann, is accused of helping to fund the operation. He is under house arrest and faces up to 15 years in jail for contravening the Foreign Military Assistance Act, which prohibits South African residents from acting as private soldiers abroad.
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However, the new allegations of torture will cast some doubt over the information that authorities in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea have extracted from the prisoners, linking them and others to plans to overthrow President Obiang.
In Malabo, the capital of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, eight South Africans, six Armenians and four local men will be sentenced this week for their role in the alleged coup.
Nick du Toit, the leader of the advance party, confessed on television three days after his arrest in March that Severo Moto, the exiled opposition leader of Equatorial Guinea, had told him to kidnap the President.
However, the prisoners have since complained of torture and horrific conditions at the notorious Black Beach jail in Malabo.
Gerhard Eugen Nershz, a German citizen arrested with the men in March, died in detention 11 days later. While the authorities say that he died of cerebral malaria, Amnesty International has claimed that the cause of death was injuries sustained from torture.
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Prosecutors in Equatorial Guinea have called for the death penalty for Mr du Toit and sentences of between 26 years and 82 years for the other accused men.
But human rights campaigners say that the men are not receiving a fair trial. They were denied access to lawyers until three days before proceedings started and their statements were signed in Spanish, although none of the foreign men can speak the language.
Equatorial Guinea has reportedly requested permission from the South African Government to interview Sir Mark. But the West African country’s Deputy Prime Minister, Ricardo Mangue Obama Nfube, denied yesterday that it had asked for the extradition of Sir Mark.
The 68 men still in detention in Zimbabwe, including Mr Mann, are likely to face charges under the anti-mercenary legislation in South Africa when they are released. The Zimbabwe charges relate only to weapon and immigration violations, and not to the alleged coup.