HARARE, Aug 27 (AFP) - Two of the 70 suspected mercenaries held in Zimbabwe for allegedly plotting a coup in Equatorial Guinea were released on Friday after five months in custody but could face fresh charges in South Africa, their lawyer said.
South Africans Harry Carlse and Jacobus Horn were acquitted by a Zimbabwean magistrate on Friday of "conspiracy to possess dangerous weapons".
"They have been released. They are out of Chikurubi. Both of them are with me in my vehicle," lawyer Alwyn Griebenow told AFP.
The charge followed their arrest on March 7 at Harare International Airport in the company of Briton Simon Mann, who is accused of being at the centre of a plot to oust Equatorial Guinea's government.
The court heard that Carlse and Horn were hired by Mann to inspect a consignment of weapons that was due to be picked up in Harare by a plane carrying 64 other alleged soldiers of fortune.
Griebenow told AFP late on Friday that the two South Africans had been released but would face fresh charges under South Africa's anti-mercenary laws when they return home.
"We know that they will be charged in South Africa once they get there, under the Foreign Military Assistance Act," he said.
But a spokesman for the elite South African crime fighting unit, the Scorpions, declined to comment when asked whether the two men would be arrested.
"Our investigation continues," the Scorpions' Sipho Ngwema told AFP in Johannesburg.
South Africa has been keen to stamp out its perceived role as a springboard for mercenary activities across Africa.
Carlse and Horn had been held in a top security prison in Zimbabwe along with 68 others.
Most of the men were acquitted on the same weapons charges on Friday but are due to be sentenced next month for committing other offences under Zimbabwe's immigration and aviation laws.