Freed Equatorial Guinea coup-plotter says others should face justice in case, returns home

Equatorial Guinea coup-plotter returns home to UK

JOHANNESBURG — British mercenary Simon Mann has threatened to settle some old scores after arriving home Wednesday following more than five years in African jails for a failed plot to take over Equatorial Guinea’s oil riches.

Some governments may be worried about a vengeful Mann: He testified last year that the U.S. and European governments knew of the 2004 plot in advance and welcomed it, as did international oil companies operating in the small West African nation.

Analysts say that in addition to revenge, Mann’s mission probably is part of the deal that won him freedom — to bring to justice the influential financiers who dreamed up the adventure that went so badly awry in the continent’s No. 3 oil producer.

Mann left Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s island capital, early Wednesday after serving 15 months of a 34-year sentence; he’d already done three years in Zimbabwe’s maximum security prison. He and four South African mercenaries also pardoned Tuesday had been given 24 hours to leave and can never return.

Mann did not speak to reporters upon his arrival in Britain. But his spokesman, Ian Monk, said Mann was “hugely grateful” to President Teodoro Obiang Nguema for the pardon. He said his first priority was to reunite with his family, including a son born after his arrest.

In his trial last year, Mann testified that Mark Thatcher, son of former British Premier Margaret Thatcher, had provided $350,000 (€237,111.31) that was used to buy a small plane that was to transport Equatorial Guinea’s exiled opposition leader Severo Moto from Madrid to Malabo.

His testimony had implicated Thatcher as the conspiracy’s chief bankroller along with Nigerian-born British-Lebanese oil tycoon Eli Calil — allegations both men denied. Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court to unwittingly helping fund the operation. He was fined, given a suspended sentence and moved from South Africa to Spain’s Costa del Sol, where he’s kept a low profile.

“But as far as I’m concerned, I am very anxious that Calil, Thatcher and one or two of the others, should face justice,” Mann said after his release from prison Tuesday.

Mann said he had made statements to British investigators while he was in jail and added: “I am very happy to restate those things in court in the U.K. as a witness for the prosecution.”

Thatcher’s spokesman released a brief statement, saying: “I’m delighted that Simon will be reunited with his family at last.”

Scotland Yard said it was investigating whether any offenses were committed in Britain concerning the conspiracy and confirmed that detectives visited the country three times last year.

Mann has said he met with Thatcher and Calil in London to plot the coup — an offense under Britain’s terrorism laws.

“I know Simon — he is really going to go all out to implicate them, to bring them to book,” said Johann Smith, a former South African military intelligence officer who had prior knowledge of the coup, knows Thatcher and Mann and who is now a political analyst. Smith also has been an adviser to President Obiang.

Smith said Obiang had always planned to release the coup plotters, in part because he feared someone might assassinate Mann, and that the African leader had said Mann should help bring the real masterminds of the plot to court.

Among others who have denied knowledge of or helping fund the coup attempt are: Lord Jeffrey Archer, the author and former Conservative legislator who was jailed for perjury and perverting the cause of justice, and London property dealer Greg Wales, who says he helped negotiate Mann’s release.

Smith has given evidence in South Africa that he alerted the CIA, the Pentagon and Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service to the coup plans in November 2003 and January 2004, two months before it was to take place. He also warned South African intelligence agents. After that became common knowledge, Smith said he received several death threats.

He said that neither Britain nor the United States fulfilled their obligations under international law to advise Obiang of the threat. The U.S. government reportedly blew the whistle to the South Africans, 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.

Britain’s foreign minister at the time, Jack Straw, first denied newspaper reports that he was given a full outline of the coup plot months in advance, including dates, details of arms shipments and key players. The only action he took was to change evacuation plans for British citizens in Equatorial Guinea. But Straw, now the lord chancellor, later was forced to admit he knew about it.

Mann has said that he believed the governments of Spain, Britain and the United States all tacitly approved of his plan, given that its target was a leader accused of corruptly using his country’s oil to become fabulously wealthy while leaving the population of a half million to struggle in poverty.