Coup mercenary gains pardon

Simon Mann (front right) at his trial last year. Photo / AP

With its sweeping views over the Solent, Palladian architecture and 8ha of Hampshire pasture, Inchmery House stands in stark contrast to the concrete prison cell in Equatorial Guinea which Simon Mann had, until yesterday, called home.

The Old Etonian and ex-SAS officer had expected to remain incarcerated in the notorious Black Beach jail until his 90th birthday.

Yesterday he was on his way back to his £5 million ($11.4 million) British country residence via a five-star hotel in the oil-rich West African country after being granted a pardon by the authoritarian leader he had tried to depose in a botched coup.

Mann, 57, was released by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, with four others who conspired to seize control of the tiny petro-state in 2004. Their failed attempt became known as the "Wonga coup" for its hugely lucrative ambitions and the alleged backing of a colourful cast of players that included Mark Thatcher and a Lebanese oil billionaire.

Mann stood to gain £9 million if the coup succeeded.

An Equatorial Guinean Government spokesman said Mann, who led a team of more than 60 battle-hardened South African mercenaries, had been released on "humanitarian grounds", citing his need for medical attention after a hernia operation last year.

He had served less than two years of a 34-year sentence imposed last June.

The father-of-seven was met yesterday by his wife, Amanda, and sister, Sarah, after two months of secret negotiations.

As well as meeting for the first time his 5-year-old son Arthur, who was born shortly after his arrest in March 2004, Mann can expect a call from Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command. Police yesterday confirmed an investigation is still ongoing into whether any offences were committed in Britain during the planning of the coup.

The Foreign Office said it had been told the release was a personal decision by Obiang, an autocratic ruler previously accused of cannibalism, who has ruled since 1979.

Equatorial Guinea has vast petro-chemical reserves which make it sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer and earn it £40 million a day. Critics point out that despite such wealth, the country's population remains one of the most impoverished on the planet.

It is understood the pardon was the result of a private deal between Obiang and Mann under which the Briton pleaded guilty to leading the coup and provided a comprehensive account of the plot which portrayed him as an "accomplice" to a coterie of international businessmen who had acted with the tacit approval of the governments of Spain and South Africa.

Mann implicated the son of the former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, as one of five "managers" of the plot with Eli Calil, a Lebanese-Nigerian oil trader based in London. Thatcher was convicted in 2005 of unwittingly helping to finance the plot when he paid £140,000 for a helicopter.

- INDEPENDENT