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--- Begin Message ----Caveat Lector-http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=998952004 Thatcher and the plot straight out of fiction FRED BRIDGLAND IN JOHANNESBURG IT IS a real-life Dogs of War plot that Frederick Forsyth or Graham Greene might have found too preposterous to try to sell as a novel. An Eton-educated Scots Guardsman, who happens to be the son of an England cricket captain, allegedly takes a million dollars from the son of a renowned British prime minister to overthrow a cannibalistic African dictator in an oil-rich former Spanish African territory with the help of South African mercenaries. Believe it or not though, that is the alleged background to the arrest yesterday of Mark Thatcher on charges of breaching South African legislation that outlaws mercenary activities. Thatcher was released on bail of �160,000 and ordered to reappear in Cape Town's Wynberg Regional Court on 25 November. The plot, had it succeeded, might have been applauded around the world because its target, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of Equatorial Guinea, has an appalling human rights record. Opponents disappear regularly in his tiny, oil-rich state. His brother is a top internal security officer and, according to Amnesty International and United States State Department reports, a torturer whose minions throw buckets of urine over their victims, slice off their ears with razor blades and rub oil into their bodies to attract soldier ants. But it was an alleged plot that went wrong almost from the start. At its heart was Simon Mann, schooled at Eton and Sandhurst and who served in the Scots Guards, the British regiment most closely associated with the upper-strata of British society, and the SAS. At birth, 51 years ago, Mann, the son of former MCC president and England cricket captain George Mann, was an unlikely candidate to end up in chains and shackles in one of Zimbabwean president Robert Mugabe's fetid prisons, where he languishes today. It was on 7 March this year that an aging Boeing-727, purchased by Mann's IT company, Logo Logistics, took off from a little-used airfield north of Pretoria, in South Africa, carrying 69 men, most of them black Angolan soldiers in South Africa's former crack foreign legion outfit, 32 Battalion. It landed after darkness at Harare international airport, taxied to a far corner of the airfield and waited for the arrival of Mann, who had purchased a large consignment of weapons from Zimbabwe Defence Industries, the weapons trading company of Mr Mugabe's government. Mann failed to show up. Instead, soldiers and police swarmed on to the aircraft, arrested the men and detained them at the notorious Chikurubi Prison, just outside Harare, where they were joined by Mann, who had arrived in the Zimbabwean capital a few days earlier. Mann and his men were charged with plotting to overthrow Mr Nguema. They have denied the charges, arguing they were en route to the Congo to fulfil a contract to guard a mine in that war-torn country. At the same time, 13 alleged fellow mercenaries, led by Nick du Toit, a former 32 Battalion officer, were arrested in Equatorial Guinea itself. They were accused of planning to team up with Mann's men on an island near Equatorial Guinea before launching the coup. According to reports in the Spanish media, the exiled dissident politician Severo Moto, a resident for several years in Madrid, would have been installed in Malabo, the Equatorial Guinea capital, within 30 minutes of the coup beginning. The trial of du Toit and his co-accused in Malabo is expected to be wrapped up this week. They could face death by firing squad if found guilty of plotting Mr Nguema's overthrow. Reports say that du Toit admits to having met Mann and Thatcher. He said Mann brought him and Thatcher together, but testified that Lady Thatcher's son expressed interest only in buying military helicopters for a mining deal in Sudan. The fundamental flaw in the coup plot was that, by late 2003, it was one of the worst-kept secrets in Africa. Western powers are jittery about Mr Nguema's regime. His country was once one of the poorest in Africa. Now, after the recent discovery of huge offshore oil reserves, it is, in per capita terms, one of the richest. It has been dubbed the Kuwait of Africa, with the world's fastest growing economy, and is expected soon to provide 5 per cent of US oil needs. Most western countries, as well as Spain, doubt the stability of a country ruled by a president who is widely accused of eating his opponents' body parts and who sits on an oil output of more than 250,000 barrels a day, and rising. He also accused Eli Calil, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessmen who lives in a �20 million house in Chelsea, of being the main financier of the coup. Mr Calil and Mr Moto are friends, and Mr Calil is also a friend of Mark Thatcher. At some point, according to many accounts, friends of Mr Calil are alleged to have contacted Mann and asked him to put together the coup operation. Mann was a good potential candidate. Despite his privileged and comfortable upbringing, he had a low boredom threshold and a taste for adventure. He passed the harrowing selection procedures of the SAS at the first attempt. . Mann resigned from the army and established his own security company which, among other ventures, provided bodyguards to wealthy Arabs to protect their Scottish Highland estates. However, he was so much a member of the Establishment and so highly thought of that General Sir Peter de la Billi�re, the commander of British forces during the 1990 Gulf war, recalled Mann to uniform to be his right-hand man. After the war, Mann became a mercenary soldier. He put together a deal for the former Marxist Leninist-turned-capitalist government of Angola that resulted in a major victory against guerrilla rebels, ending a 30-year war. The fee was more than �20 million. Mann retired to the upmarket Constantia suburb, where his neighbour, in a �4.5 million, five-bedroom house with swimming pool and tennis court at No 10 Dawn Street, was Mark Thatcher. Affair throws up 'rogues gallery' MARK Thatcher, Jeffrey Archer, Peter Mandelson - the list of names associated in some way in the tale of the alleged coup plot in Equatorial Guinea reads like a rogues gallery of public figures the public loves to hate. Mr Mandelson probably has the least to worry about. His involvement is peripheral at best, though it does have echoes of his past mishaps. The man who lost his place in the Cabinet in 1998 for failing to disclose that he used a loan from fellow minister Geoffrey Robinson to buy a flat in Notting Hill, London, turns out to have rented a �500,000 one-bedroom flat in nearby Holland Park from one Eli Calil, who is being sued for allegedly helping to fund the coup attempt. The new Brussels trade commissioner has refused to talk about his relationship with Mr Calil, other than to say that he paid the proper rent personally for the flat and that he has no knowledge of any coup plot. For Lord Archer, things are a little more awkward. Calil, he acknowledges, is a family friend. The Nigerian-born oil trader also is a former financial adviser to the disgraced peer. Documents linked to the coup case appear to show that a payment of more than �100,000 was made in the name of one J.H. (the peer's initials) Archer to an offshore bank account belonging to Simon Mann, the old Etonian former SAS man turned mercenary accused of organising the coup attempt. Lord Archer's lawyers, however, have insisted that he had no dealings with Mann or his firm, Logo Limited. And then there is Sir Mark himself. Although it is by no means his first scrape, it may yet prove to be the most serious. He first came to national prominence when, in 1981, his role in securing a �600 million contract for the Cementation company to build a university in Oman came under scrutiny. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> <FONT COLOR="#000099">Make a clean sweep of pop-up ads. Yahoo! Companion Toolbar. 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