Gay couple 'freed from jail in Zambia amnesty'

Zambia's President Edgar Lungu has pardoned two men who were jailed last year for having gay sex, AFP news agency reports.

Their 15-year sentence triggered a diplomatic row which ended in the recalling of the US ambassador.

AFP says that the two men, Japhet Chataba and Steven Samba, were listed among the names of nearly 3,000 prisoners to be released to mark Africa Freedom Day, which fell on Monday.

Zambia is a deeply conservative society where homosexual acts are illegal.

This was legislation inherited from the British colonial era. Last November, a High Court in the capital, Lusaka, sentenced the two men for "performing unnatural acts".

They had booked into a lodge, and a worker peeped through an open window and saw them having sex, the court heard.

At the time, US ambassador Daniel Foote said he was "horrified" by the sentencing.

He implored the Zambian government to review the case and its homosexuality laws, but then faced a backlash for doing so. In response, President Lungu said he did not "want such people in our midst. We want him gone."

Mr Foote was recalled to Washington in December.