South Africa Frees Mercenary
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PIETERMARITZBURG, South Africa — Mercenary “Mad” Mike Hoare was released from prison today after serving part of a 10-year sentence for hijacking a plane to flee the Seychelles islands after a failed bid to topple the government.
The 68-year-old veteran of mercenary wars in Biafra and Zaire, formerly the Belgian Congo, was freed under a general amnesty announced in December. Hoare, a former colonel in Britain’s Coldstream Guards and the basis for the film “The Wild Geese,” led 42 men in an attempt in November, 1981, to topple the leftist government of President Albert Rene of the Seychelles, located in the Indian Ocean off the east coast of Africa.
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