Zambian coup appeal case adjourned

The coup was aimed at overthrowing President Chiluba

By Penny Dale BBC, Lusaka

The court appeal by 55 Zambian soldiers who tried to stage a coup in 1997 started in Lusaka on Monday.

The soldiers, convicted and sentenced to death three years for organising the short-lived, drunken and shambolic coup, claim they tried to seize power only because of what they called the rampant corruption in the government of then president Frederick Chiluba.

With the country awash with talk of cleaning up the corruption of the past ten years and amid the attempts to bring to trial former president Frederick Chiluba for his alleged involvement in the corruption, the treason trial appeal has generated much interest among Zambians.

As the appeal got under way, some human rights groups have said that the soldiers should be considered for unconditional release by the current president, Levy Mwanawasa.

But the case had hardly opened on Monday when it spluttered to a halt because not all the records of evidence presented in the original case were ready and the case was adjourned to December.

But not before it became clear that after years of silence the two chief architects of the botched coup are now ready to talk.

Cancer treatment

There was a buzz of excitement in the courtroom as Zambia's most high-profile prisoners eagerly took their seats in Lusaka's Supreme Court.

In their first trip for years beyond the walls of the notorious Mukobeko maximum security prison, the 55 soldiers were due to appeal against their death sentences for conspiring to overthrow the government of former president Frederick Chiluba.

But the coup-plotters' hopes that at long last they had the chance to escape death row quickly dissipated when it became clear that the record of the evidence presented in the original case make their decision, was still not ready and the case had to be adjourned again.

But this was not before one of the two masterminds of the failed coup got a chance to take the courtroom floor.

The two army officers - Captain Stephen Lungu and Captain Jackson Chiti - have decided to represent themselves during the case, a highly unusual move, especially in a case of treason, which carries a mandatory sentence of death by hanging.

Captain Chiti appealed to the court to compel the prison services to provide him with the drugs he needs to treat his prostate cancer but which he says he cannot afford.

He also asked the court to ensure he gets a daily diet of meat, fruit and vegetable because of his illness.

Such food is considered luxury in Zambia's cash-strapped and overcrowded prisons, where inmates often have to survive on one meal a day of maize meal and raw groundnuts.

Captain Lungu, better known as Captain Solo, the name he gave himself when he briefly took over the country in the early hours of 28 October 1997, was unable to make his statement before the case was adjourned.

But speaking to the BBC afterwards in the courtroom before the hour's drive to prison in the town of Kabwe, Captain Solo says he's now ready to tell the truth about what happened in 1997.

In his original case, he kept silent, but Captain Solo says since becoming a born-again Christian he now feels the need to talk, and promises to surprise the country when the appeal kicks off again in December.