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Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Released British Mercenary Seeks Revenge And A Book Deal

An expensive round of score-settling and legal cases among the purported financiers and conspirators behind the 2004 coup plot in Equatorial Guinea is likely to be the immediate outcome of the release of convicted plotter Simon Mann, a dual British and South African national, in Malabo on 2 November.

Less formally, Mann has some settling up to do with the soldiers imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe. Mann was convicted in 2008 of leading a conspiracy to topple President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

He was sentenced to 35 years but had cooperated fully with the Equatorial Guinean regime, prompting speculation that he might benefit from clemency. Officials in Malabo add that Mann had been interviewed in prison since his trial by British anti-terrorist police officers.

The main targets, according to Mann, will be the businessmen Sir Mark Thatcher and Ely Claude Alan Calil, an oil trader who has dual Lebanese and British nationality (AC Vol 50 No 12). 'I'm very anxious that Calil, Thatcher and one or two of the others should face justice,' Mann said within hours of his release.

During his trial in Malabo, he accused Thatcher of financing and managing the coup plot against Obiang. Thatcher claims he is relaxed about Mann's release.

Mann has made conflicting statements about Calil's role in the affair, but after his extradition to Equatorial Guinea in 2008 he insisted Calil, whom he called 'the Cardinal', had been the main architect of the plot. Yet Calil told Africa Confidential that he welcomed Mann's release: 'Simon said a lot of things in detention in difficult places. He has been through such a lot, he might need a while to get over such an ordeal but whenever the time is right...I hope we can talk.'

A few weeks before the release, Calil told AC that there were some key questions about the plot raised in Mann's statements that needed answering: the role of Gabon's late President Omar Bongo Ondimba, whom Mann met in 2003 in the critical planning stages of the coup; the role of other business interests - aside from Calil and Thatcher - in financing the plot; and why the plotters carried on after they had received a clear warning from South African security services in late 2003 to abandon it.

These and other issues form part of the continuing investigation by Britain's anti-terrorist police. It is an offence to conspire on British territory to overthrow another country's government, but a successful case has never been prosecuted.

Equatorial Guinea attempted to sue Calil, Thatcher and British security consultant Greg Wales for coup-plotting through Britain's civil courts all the way to the House of Lords before dropping the case at the eleventh hour.

British officials may have little appetite for pursuing the plotters through the courts, even helped by a key witness such as Mann, given the subterfuge and betrayal that might emerge in a lengthy court case.

Some plotters claim that the South African, British, French, Spanish and United States governments were aware of the plot and offered tacit support. Almost all the material presented in the public domain in the last five years to support such allegations has been dismissed by courts in South Africa, Zimbabwe, Guernsey, Lebanon and London.

Yet if Mann wants to proceed, we understand he has access to archives of email correspondence with Calil and Thatcher, as well as bank records itemising transactions between front companies established in Guernsey and other tax havens to finance the plot.

Mann has said nothing so far about Wales, once accused by Malabo of being the 'political officer' for the plotters. According to Wales, he played a mediating role in securing Mann's release during several meetings with Malabo's diplomats in London. Severo Moto, the Equatorian opposition leader exiled in Spain whom Mann was meant to install, has welcomed the release but has otherwise kept silent.

Four South African special forces officers also convicted for the plot - Nick du Toit, George Alerson, Sergio Cardoso and José Sundays - were released on the same day as Mann (whose mother is South African). However, as Mann's private jet took off, they were left waiting in Malabo for South Africa's Department of Foreign Affairs to organise their repatriation.

South Africa's mission in Malabo initially claimed to be unaware that Du Toit and the others had been freed on 2 November, but it seems that the release followed negotiations ahead of President Jacob Zuma's 3 November visit to Malabo. Zuma's political ally and former Intelligence Director Billy Masetlha had led the monitoring of the plotters' activities in South Africa. Other officials from Zuma's office had been involved in negotiations with Malabo for some time, after lobbying by white business interests close to the governing African National Congress.

Equatorial Guinea also wanted to draw a line under the affair. Obiang is certain to win another seven-year term in the 28 November elections but a diplomatic endorsement by Zuma would be useful. Malabo's relations with Pretoria, which flourished after the discovery of the 2004 plot, soured towards the end of Thabo Mbeki's presidency. Zuma, who has improved relations with Angola, wants to make more friends among Africa's oil and gas producers. His talks with Obiang centred on the plan to make Equatorial Guinea a regional hub for natural gas exports and joint ventures in agriculture, mining and tourism. Having Zuma as an ally will help Obiang in his periodic disputes with Cameroon and Gabon.

Aside from high-stakes diplomatic negotiations, there is a precedent in Equatorial Guinea for coup plotters being released after serving only short periods of long sentences. In 2003, Placido Miko of the opposition Convergencia para la Democracia Social was released barely a year into a 14-year sentence for plotting to assassinate Obiang.

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