U.S. Mercenary Reported Slain in Failed Coup

Security forces in the West African nation of Sao Tome and Principe shot and killed a suspected American mercenary and captured another in an aborted coup, the head of the national news agency said today.

A South African official denied earlier reports that his country was involved in the coup attempt in Sao Tome and Principe, a Marxist-ruled island nation off the coast of Gabon.

STP-Press director Manuel Dende told reporters in the Angolan capital of Luanda that one of two foreign mercenaries presumed to be American was killed when the invaders attacked the central police station in Sao Tome, the capital, early Tuesday. He said the other was captured by government troops.

Authorities in the two-island nation said two armed raiders were killed, one wounded and 43 captured after they landed on beaches close to Sao Tome in an abortive attempt to overthrow the government of President Manuel Pinto da Costa. A policeman also was wounded.

Dende did not provide any further information on the suspected American mercenaries.

Leader Identified

He told Angolan reporters that the leader of the invading force, identified as the head of a Sao Tome opposition group, was among those captured, along with mercenaries from several other African countries. He said the vessel used to drop the raiders in fishing boats also was seized.

He said the coup leader was Afonso dos Santos, head of a group calling itself the Liberators of Sao Tome and Principe. Angolan television, radio and newspaper reports quoted unidentified official sources as saying the invading force may have been landed close to the islands by South Africans.

The South African Foreign Affairs Department’s director for West Africa said that South Africa was “absolutely and categorically not involved.”

Reports have appeared recently in West European newspapers about the presence of South Africans in Equatorial Guinea, about 180 miles north of the island of Sao Tome.

In Lisbon, a Sao Tome government opponent said Dos Santos was a former colonel in the Portuguese colonial army who led an opposition movement based in Walvis Bay, a South African enclave on the coast of South-West Africa.