"Wanted: Employment as mercenary on full-time or job contract basis. Preferably in South or Central America, but anywhere in the world if you pay transportation. Contact Gearhart, Box 1457, Wheaton, Md. 20902."
That ad appeared last January in Soldier of Fortune, a magazine aimed at military buffs and mercenaries. It got Daniel Gearhart, 34, a Viet Nam veteran who was deeply in debt from family medical bills, a job the next month as a mercenary in the Angolan civil war. Last week it also got him a date with a firing squad.
In the makeshift courtroom in Luanda's sandstone Chamber of Commerce building, where they went on trial last month, the 13 British and American mercenaries gathered after a nine-day hiatus in the proceedings, during which the five-member revolutionary tribunal had deliberated their fate. Optimism ran reasonably high among Angolan, British and American defense lawyers, even though Prosecutor Manuel Rui Monteiro had demanded death for all. In his marathon summation (3 hr. 20 min.), Monteiro had blasted the U.S. and British governments more than the mercenaries. He branded the U.S. as "the home of the CIA and the mother of mercenaries" and Henry Kissinger as "the traveling salesman of the international crime syndicate."
Trail of Rape. Chief Judge Ernesto Texeira da Silva, in declaring the sentences, coldly described the mercenaries as "dogs of war with bloodstained muzzles who left a trail of rape, murder and pillage across the face of our nation." Four men were condemned to death: Costas Georgiou, 25, the notorious Cypriot-born Briton who, as "Colonel Tony Callan," had ordered 13 of his own men shot; Andrew McKenzie, 25, Georgiou's second in command, who had helped execute the men; John Derek Barker, 35, another Briton; and Gearhart. The other nine, including two Americans, Gary Acker, 21, of Sacramento, Calif., and Gustavo Grillo, 27, of Jersey City, got sentences ranging from 16 to 30 years in prison.
The death sentence had been expected for Georgiou, who had accepted full blame for killings attributed to the men serving under him. But there was surprise at Gearhart's sentence. He was arrested only a few days after he arrived in Angola and denied ever firing a shot. Evidently, his ad in Soldier of Fortune was taken as proof of evil intent. British Prune Minister James Callaghan cabled a plea for mercy for the men to Angolan President Agostinho Neto, who alone has the power to reduce the sentences.
In Washington, the State Department termed the Gearhart sentence "unjustified." Two U.S. lawyers who attended the trial, however, charged that the Ford Administration had violated the Neutrality Act by allowing mercenaries to be recruited. The State Department denied that it had condoned the hiring of any mercenaries.