British coup-plotter Simon Mann, 4 South Africans, freed in Equatorial Guinea after pardon

British coup-plotter freed in Equatorial Guinea

JOHANNESBURG — Equatorial Guinea freed a British coup-plotter and four South African mercenaries Tuesday after a presidential pardon for their foreign-bankrolled conspiracy to overthrow the government and take over the country’s oil riches.

In a spectacular trial last year, Simon Mann testified that U.S. and European governments knew of the plan in advance and welcomed it as did international oil companies operating in the Central African nation, which is the continent’s No. 3 oil producer.

His testimony also implicated the son of former British Premier Margaret Thatcher as chief bankroller, which Mark Thatcher denied.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Jose Obono Olo told The Associated Press Tuesday that President Teodoro Obiang Nguema had granted the five men full pardons for the 2004 coup plot. Information Minister Geronimo Osa said they will never be allowed to return to the country.

Obono, who was the attorney general who prosecuted the coup plotters, denied rumors that Mann was unwell and that any pressure had been brought by foreign governments.

But a statement on the Ministry of Information Web site noted that Mann and the others were being freed “with the hope that the accused return to their families and receive appropriate medical treatment according to their age and health.” It said the Ministry of Justice, Culture and Prisons proposed the pardon to the president, who granted “compassionate forgiveness.”

The two officials spoke in telephone interviews from Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s steamy island capital off Africa’s west coast, where Frederick Forsythe three decades ago wrote up a similar plot as “Dogs of War,” later made into a movie starring Christopher Walken.

In the book, a ragtag troop of mercenaries is recruited by British elite to seize control of an African backwater rich in platinum at the height of the Cold War.

Equatorial Guinea’s president has said that the real-life plan was to set up a puppet government under exiled opposition leader Severo Moto, with the coup financiers controlling contracts to the country’s oil wealth.

“Dogs of War” ends in disaster for the adventurers, with their plot collapsing and the mercenaries killed.

Mann apparently can look to a happier ending that was not foreseen when he was sentenced in 2008 to more than 34 years in Malabo’s Black Beach Prison, notorious for torture, unexplained deaths of inmates, a lack of food and much disease. At the time, Amnesty International said prisoners there are condemned to “a slow, lingering death sentence.”

Many suspects in the Mann case said their confessions were obtained under torture, which the U.S. State Department and others say is routine. One of the original 91 defendants, a German, died in his first days of custody after what Amnesty International said was torture.

Mann’s family members said they were “overjoyed at the prospect of finally welcoming Simon home after 5½ long years away.”

“Everyone is profoundly grateful to the president and the government of Equatorial Guinea,” the family said in a statement.

Obono said Mann was at a Malabo hotel with a brother and sister who flew out to take him home. The South African government said the four other mercenaries — Nicolaas du Toit, Sergio Cardoso, Jose Sundays and George Alerson — were at its embassy in Malabo.

Mann was born into a life of wealth and privilege, a former officer in Britain’s elite SAS who was educated at Eton, a prestigious British private school whose alumni include Princes William and Harry. Mann is the son of former England cricket captain George Mann and heir to the Watley Ale brewing fortune.

Simon Mann went on to become a true soldier of fortune: He helped found two South African private security companies — Executive Outcomes and Sand-line — that were involved in some of Africa’s bloodiest civil wars. Executive Outcomes made millions guarding Angolan oil installations and helping rout rebels in Sierra Leone with brutal actions.

But the coup in Equatorial Guinea, a former Spanish colony, unraveled before it even began. Mann and a planeload of other mercenaries were arrested in 2004 on a chartered aircraft in Zimbabwe, where they had flown to buy assault rifles, grenades and anti-tank rockets.

The U.S. government reportedly got wind of the plot and blew the whistle, though no U.S. government official ever confirmed that. Several leading U.S. oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess and ChevronTexaco, operate in Equatorial Guinea.

“It was like an official operation. The governments of Spain and South Africa were giving the green light: ‘You’ve got to do it,’” Mann had claimed in court. Tacit approval for regime change came from the Pentagon, CIA and the big U.S. oil companies, he testified.

Those who would profit, according to Mann, were Thatcher, British businessman David Wales and Nigerian-born British citizen Eli Calil — who all denied roles in the plot.

At one point after the plot was uncovered, nearly 100 men were being held in Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe and South Africa.

Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court to unwittingly helping fund the operation. He was fined and given a suspended sentence. Mann said Thatcher had provided $350,000, which was used to buy a small plane that was to transport Equatorial Guinea’s exiled opposition leader from Madrid to Malabo.

Scotland Yard said it was investigating whether any offenses were committed in Britain in connection with the alleged coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, adding that a “small team” of detectives visited the country three times last year.

Mann, 57, said he had accepted he was doing the job for money — said to be $15 million — but he claimed he was sympathetic to the story he was told: that Equatorial Guinea’s oil money was only enriching Obiang’s family while the country’s half million citizens lived in squalor.

Equatorial Guinea has become the richest per capita in Africa since oil was discovered in the 1990s, yet the rate of infant deaths has actually increased since then, according to U.N. figures.

Obiang took power in a 1979 coup in which then-President Francisco Macias Nguema, his uncle, was assassinated by a firing squad. Under pressure from Western backers, Obiang held the first multiparty elections in 1991 and has won every election since. New elections are scheduled for Nov. 29.

Despite U.S. State Department allegations of gross human rights abuses by Obiang’s administration, he was invited to Washington in 2006 and met with then-Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who called him “a good friend.”