JOHANNESBURG (AP) — Equatorial Guinea's chief justice says coup-plotter Simon Mann and four South African mercenaries have been released from prison.
Supreme Court Chief Justice Obono Olo told The Associated Press earlier Tuesday that the men had been pardoned for attempting the overthrow of Equatorial Guinea's government.
They were convicted in a trial that aired a plot in which well-connected Britons and others sought to install an exiled opposition figure in Africa's No. 3 oil producing nation.
The coup unraveled before it even began, when Mann and a planeload of other mercenaries were arrested in Zimbabwe where they were to buy assault rifles, grenades and anti-tank rockets.
Mann had been serving a 35-year sentence for the 2004 plot.
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