Judge: British coup plotter Simon Mann, 4 South Africans, pardoned in Equatorial Guinea

By AP November 3rd, 2009 (via Breaking News 24/7)
Judge: British coup plotter Simon Mann, 4 South Africans, pardoned in Equatorial Guinea
Coup plotter Simon Mann pardoned in Eq. Guinea

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — British coup-plotter Simon Mann and four South African mercenaries have been pardoned for plotting the overthrow of the government of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, the country’s chief judge told The Associated Press on Tuesday.

Supreme Court Chief Justice Obono Olo said Mann and his accomplices would be freed Tuesday morning and flown home. Olo said President Teodoro Obiang Nguema on Monday gave the five men “a full pardon for humanitarian reasons” for the 2004 coup plot.

The men were convicted in a spectacular trial where Mann implicated Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as a chief bankroller along with Equatorial-Guinean based Lebanese businessman Elie Khalil. Mann said Khalil told him the government of Spain, the country’s former colonial power, was aware of and supported the plot to overthrow Obiang. He has led the African country for three decades, and is accused by human rights groups of using the oil wealth to make his family fabulously rich while most of his countrymen live in squalor.

The government of the United States was reported to have gotten wind of the plot and blown the whistle, though no U.S. government official ever confirmed that. Several leading U.S. oil companies operate in Equatorial Guinea, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess, Marathon Oil, ChevronTexaco, Devon Energy and CMS Energy Corp.

The plan was to put opposition leader Severo Moto, who is exiled in Madrid, in power and get some control over the country’s oil wealth.

Mann first was arrested in 2004 when his plane landed in Harare, Zimbabwe, with 70 other alleged mercenaries to collect weapons purchased from Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer.

Olo, who was the attorney general who prosecuted the coup plotters, denied rumors that Mann was unwell, saying he is “fine, fit.” He also denied that any pressure had been brought by foreign governments seeking their release from the notorious Black Beach prison.

But a statement at 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.” The ministry noted that if he had served his 35-year sentence, Mann would have been more than 90 years old on his release.

It said the Ministry of Justice, Culture and Prisons proposed the pardon to the president, who granted “compassionate forgiveness.”

Eton-educated Mann, a 56-year-old former British military officer, was the failed coup’s ringleader. Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court several years ago to unwittingly helping to fund the operation. He was fined and given a suspended sentenced.

The South Africans involved are Nicolaas du Toit, Sergio Cardoso, Jose Sundays and George Alerson.

Obiang himself 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, most recently in 2002 with 91 percent of votes. New elections are scheduled Nov. 29.

Opponents say the electoral process and voting are rigged in his party’s favor.

Equatorial Guinea is Africa’s No. 3 oil producer. Despite its wealth, most of the country’s half-million people are very poor, child mortality rates have risen and government officials are accused of siphoning off oil revenue.

International human rights groups have accused U.S. oil companies of aiding corruption. A U.S. government 2004 report into Equato-Guinean accounts found that some $700 million was held at Washington’s Riggs Bank — making the country the bank’s biggest customer.

Riggs was fined millions of dollars in money-laundering fines. Nothing was done against Obiang, who was invited to Washington by then President George W. Bush in 2006 and called a “good friend” by then Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.