Zimbabwe on Thursday officially released 62 foreigners jailed for a year in connection with an alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea but they will spend another night in custody, their lawyer told Reuters. The group, all with South African passports, were arrested in March 2004 after their plane was impounded during a stopover at Harare international airport. They were jailed on immigration and firearms charges and their sentences expired on Wednesday. But they will stay at Harare's Chikurubi high security prison until Friday morning because of delays in organising their deportation to South Africa, their Zimbabwean lawyer Jonathan Samkange said. "All the accused persons have now been released ... into the custody of immigration and the chief immigration officer has just informed me that they will be deported tomorrow morning," Samkange told reporters. "They are considered to be of security high risk ... obviously they (immigration officials) have to liase with their South African counterparts to make sure that the South Africans are ready to accept them," he said. --SP 2009 Local Time 1709 GMT
