Equatorial Guinea Frees British Mercenary

[maddezmom]

Source: NYT

DAKAR, Senegal - The oil-rich and repressive West African state of Equatorial Guinea said Tuesday it had pardoned Simon Mann, a former British special forces officer, jailed last year for plotting to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in a conspiracy that seemed as much a throwback to the continent’s past as a catalogue of bungles.


According to a government Web site Mr. Mann, an alumnus of Britain’s upper-crust Eton College and scion of a wealthy family of brewers, had been pardoned by presidential decree for his part in an episode that also entangled Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

“The pardon was allowed for by presidential decree and granted on humanitarian grounds,” the government in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea’s capital, said. It added that Mr. Mann had “shown sufficient and credible signs of repentance and a desire to take his place in society.”

Mr. Mann, 56, must leave Equatorial Guinea within 24 hours and is “absolutely prohibited” from returning, the Web posting said.. Mr. Mann was jailed for 34 years in July 2008, accused of leading a coup attempt that barely reached its target. As the plot unfolded in 2004, he was among a planeload of 80 mercenaries arrested at Harare airport in Zimbabwe after they landed there to pick up weapons on their way to Equatorial Guinea.

Mr. Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court to unwittingly helping to bankroll the operation. He was fined and given a suspended sentenced.



Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/africa/04guinea.html

[Don Caballero]

1. Just read a great book about this

called "The Wonga Coup."

[BlueMTexpat]

2. BBC made the whole episode into a docudrama called "Coup."

It's very well done and shows what a truly incompetent bunch of "plotters" Mann was allied with (not that I would have wished them success in any event).
Of course, the bigger and biggest fish never got caught.

[bemildred]

3. I wonder how big the bribe was. nt

[Wilms]

4. "an episode that also entangled Mark Thatcher"???

Oh, so Maggie's son was just walking down the street whistling the British equivalent of Dixie when some strange tentacle jumped out and "entangled" him in a plot to overthrow a foreign gov't?.