http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1670431,00.html
4-month 'bonus' for Zim 70
Harare - Zimbabwe High Court has reduced by four months the sentences of a group of
suspected mercenaries jailed in connection with an alleged coup plot in Equatorial
Guinea, said a court official on Wednesday.
"I can confirm that the sentences of the suspected mercenaries and the two pilots
have been reduced by four months," said a court source.
Judge Yunus Omerjee gave no reasons when he handed down his ruling in an application
made by the suspected mercenaries' lawyers late last year.
"If my calculations are right, the men should be released immediately," said their
South African-based lawyer, Alwyn Griebenow.
Last year, a lower court jailed the group, including former British soldier Simon
Mann, on various convictions for breaching Zimbabwe's aviation, immigration, firearms
and security laws.
Mann was slapped with a seven-year jail term, later reduced to four years.
The two pilots who flew a plane into Harare to collect arms got 16 months and the
rest were jailed for 12 months.
Griebenow said the men serving the one-year term now had to serve only eight months,
which ended on May 10.
But, under Zimbabwean law, the men also qualify for a one-third remission of sentence
for well-behaved prisoners.
Counting this reduction, all the men - except the two pilots who received longer jail
terms - should be released immediately. 
The court official said the men would be freed into the custody of Zimbabwe's
immigration department for deportation to South Africa as they had been declared
illegal immigrants.
Mann, a former member of Britain's crack Special Air Services (SAS) force, along with
69 others were arrested on March 7 last year at Harare International Airport en route
to Equatorial Guinea.
They were accused of being on their way to join an advance party in the west African
state of Equatorial Guinea in a plot to overthrow longtime leader Teodoro Obiang
Nguema.
The men denied the charges, claiming they were on their way to the Democratic
Republic of Congo to guard mines.
British businessman Sir Mark Thatcher, who was accused of partly financing the
alleged plot, was recently fined by a South African court for violating
anti-mercenary laws and paid a R3m fine.