Cyanide is used extensively in the mining industry to dissolve gold and silver from slimy pulps. In this study a coconut shell carbon was impregnated with different metals, and then used for the recovery of free cyanide. The metal impregnated carbon outperformed the virgin carbon both kinetically and in the final cyanide loading. It is proposed that the free cyanide adsorbed onto the metal impregnated carbon via two mechanisms, viz. [a] free cyanide is oxidised catalytically, and [b] the metal is leached from the impregnated carbon, followed by the formation of a metal cyanide complex, and the subsequent adsorption of the complex on the carbon. It was found that the silver (as silver nitrate) impregnated carbon yielded higher free cyanide loadings when compared to silver (as silver cyanide) and copper (as copper(ll)chloride) impregnated carbons. Furthermore, the presence of silver cyanide in solution did not influence the adsorption of free cyanide on silver impregnated carbon. Moreover, the atmosphere during impregnation did not affect the performance of metal impregnated carbon, with respect to free cyanide adsorption. An optimum impregnation procedure is proposed which allowed maximum free cyanide recovery.