Rough Justice At a Show Trial

Africa's political show trial of the year was under way in Luanda last week, and seemingly everyone was tuned in. Citizens of the Angolan capital walked the streets with transistor radios pressed to their ears. In the evening, silent, intent knots of people watched tape replays of the trial over Angola's single, government-controlled TV channel. The unwilling stars of the judicial spectacular in Luanda's sandstone Chamber of Commerce building: 13 foreign mercenaries, all captured in the northern part of the country last February, who were accused in a 139-part indictment of more than 100 assorted crimes against the Angolan people during the recent civil war. Ten of the defendants were British, including the notorious Costas Georgiu, 25, also known as "Colonel Callan." In addition there were three Americans -Daniel Gearhart, 34, of Kensington, Md., Gary Acker, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., and Argentine-born Gustavo ("Gus") Grillo, 27, a resident of Jersey City.

In court, reported TIME Nairobi Bureau Chief Lee Griggs from Luanda, the mercenaries were dressed identically in beltless, one-piece tan prison-issue jumpsuits. During the twice-daily sessions, the prisoners sat calmly on backless wooden stools on a red-roped dock facing the tribunal -a court that consisted of two Angolan lawyers, two soldiers and a representative of OMA, the national women's organization. The mercenaries followed the questioning intently on headsets for simultaneous translation into five languages -English, French, Portuguese, Spanish and Russian. There was a point to having the proceedings delivered in the two latter languages: Russian and Cuban advisers to the Angolan government were conspicuously present in the courtroom.

The charges against the mercenaries ranged from specific atrocities (murder, assault, arson, sabotage, rape and robbery) to vague accusations of "meeting with the traitor Holden Roberto" (head of the defeated National Front for the Liberation of Angola -F.N.L.A.). The "crime" of being a mercenary, charged against all 13 defendants, is not denned in Angolan law, but most foreign observers were impressed by at least the surface fairness of the proceedings.

Trial Tone. The evenhanded tone of the trial was set by Chief Judge Ernesto Texeira da Silva, a Luanda lawyer. He questioned witnesses in a calm, fatherly way, occasionally rebuked flamboyant, goateed Prosecutor Manuel Rui Monteiro, and allowed defense lawyers to introduce matters that Western courts would quickly have ruled inadmissible or irrelevant. At one point the judge ordered the arrest of a prosecution witness for perjury and had the testimony of another stricken from the record.

The British mercenaries' basic defense was that they merely acted under the orders of Callan, who on the second day of the trial had in fact accepted the blame for any crimes committed by his subordinates. "Anything they are charged with is my responsibility," the swaggering former paratrooper told the tribunal. "I don't want to answer any more questions, O.K.? I've made my statement."

As the trial ended, Callan once more insisted that he was responsible for ordering the murders. Andrew McKenzie, 25, who lost his left leg in an explosion during the civil war, was accused of helping to execute 13 other mercenaries who refused to join a firing squad. He said that Callan "told me that if I didn't do it I'd be joining the victims." McKenzie's defense was directly challenged by one prosecution witness, a former F.N.L.A. soldier, who testified that both Callan and McKenzie had forced a group of Roberto's troops to strip naked. The witness claimed that Callan said, "When I count one, two, three -run" -and that both the colonel and McKenzie had opened fire on the fleeing men. "Lying bastard," growled McKenzie from his wheelchair in the dock.

The defendants pleaded mitigating circumstances, ranging from deprived childhoods to ignorance of the real motive of their missions. Some insisted that they had been recruited only to serve in Zaire. Others claimed that they had signed up only to train F.N.L.A. forces. Gearhart and Acker said they had never shot at anyone. Acker insisted that he had been "ambushed, wounded and captured before I could take any offensive action."

By far the most colorful and cooperative defendant was Grille, a former Marine sergeant in Viet Nam, who told the tribunal that he had once worked as a bodyguard for a bookmaker ("who probably pays taxes to the Mafia") before his service with the F.N.L.A. in Angola. Grillo willingly propagandized against his adopted country. "The part of American society I come from," he said, "was a monster, full of power seekers and status seekers, with lots of drugs and so on. In New York they have restaurants for dogs while people die in the streets of cold and hunger."

Nignogs. Wearing black robes and glaring malevolently at the defendants, Prosecutor Monteiro tried to interject strident political notes. With seeming deliberation, he failed to correct his witnesses when they kept referring to the mercenaries, most of whom were British, as "the Americans." Raising the specter of racism, he asked one defendant: "Isn't it true you referred to black Angolans between yourselves as nignogs?" Answered the prisoner firmly: "Sir, we never once used that name." Monteiro also arranged for a courtroom film show that featured clips of President Ford denying that the U.S. was training mercenaries, followed by gruesome shots of massive graves and mutilated corpses on the Angolan battlefield.

In an angry summation, Monteiro demanded the death sentence for all the accused. The trial concluded at week's end; no verdict was announced, but Judge da Silva said sentencing would take place early this week. If the men are condemned to death, it will be up to Angolan President Agostinho Neto to decide whether the sentences are carried out. Although there is no appeal from the tribunal's decision except on technical grounds, the president must approve the sentences and alone has power to commute them. Chances are strong that Callan will eventually go before a firing squad, but Grillo and the other two Americans might escape that fate. Last week Angola asked for a special meeting of the United Nations Security Council to consider its application for membership in the international body. A previous move by the Neto government to become a U.N. member was postponed in May at Washington's request. In a not so subtle bit of blackmail, Luanda may be holding three American lives to ransom against a possible veto at the United Nations by the U.S.

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