A Zimbabwe court has acquitted most of 70 suspected mercenaries charged with weapons offences in an alleged plot to topple the government of Equatorial Guinea but found their leader, Simon Mann, guilty.
Most of the men held in Zimbabwe had last month pleaded guilty to lesser charges of violating Zimbabwe's immigration and civil aviation laws when their plane landed in Harare in March.
Sixty-six men, all travelling on South African passports, were found not guilty by a magistrate sitting at a make-shift courthouse in the Harare maximum security Chikurubi prison.
"There was no clear evidence to connect accused persons to the purchase of firearms. In fact the state conceded there was no direct evidence connecting them," said Harare magistrate Mr Mishrod Guvamombe.
"The state has failed to discharge its onus of proving the accused persons guilty beyond reasonable doubt. In the result I find the accused not guilty as charged," he said to loud cheers from relatives and some of the defendants.
Mann was found guilty of attempting to possess dangerous weapons while prosecutors dropped charges against two of the defendants and could not say the fate of one other.
Mann faces up to 10 years in jail on the weapons charge. The magistrate will deliver his sentences on September 10th.
The verdict came just days after South African police arrested Mr Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and charged him with involvement in financing the coup plot.
Mr Thatcher, named by one of the other defendants during the Zimbabwe trial as a friend of Mann, denies the charges and was released on bail by a Cape Town magistrate.
A total of 84 foreigners, mostly South Africans, have been put on trial in Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea on charges of involvement in an attempted coup in the latter country.
Equatorial Guinea is trying 14 suspected foreign mercenaries it says were an advance party of those charged in Zimbabwe.