HARARE – Freed British mercenary Simon Mann has threatened to spill
the beans on the failed Equatorial Guinea coup plot in a development that
may shed some light on the role played by Zimbabwe’s state-owned arms
manufacturer in the 2004 plan to topple the Central African country’s
long-serving leader.

Mann was arrested at Harare International Airport in
March 2004 together with 69 South African and Congolese mercenaries en route
to Equatorial Guinea where they were on a mission to stage a coup against
the country’s leader President Theodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

The Harare
leg of the mission was meant to take delivery of an assortment of arms the
mercenaries had bought from the Zimbabwe Defence Industries (ZDI) but turned
sour for the mercenaries after the arms supplier set a trap at the last
minute.
He was extradited to Equatorial Guinea in February 2008 after losing a
Zimbabwe High Court appeal against being moved to the Central African nation
where he had been convicted of plotting to topple the government in
absentia. The High Court in Malabo sentenced Mann the former British army
officer to 34 years in prison last year but he became eligible for
presidential clemency this year due to “good behaviour”. The Briton
was freed from an Equatorial Guinea prison in the capital Malabo two weeks
and immediately threatened to spill the beans of the roles played by several
purported financiers and conspirators, including South African-based British
businessman Mark Thatcher and Ely Claude Alan Calil, an oil trader who has
dual Lebanese and British nationality.
“I’m very anxious that Calil, Thatcher and one or two of the others
should face justice,’ Mann said within hours of his release on November 2.
During his trial in Malabo, he accused Thatcher of financing and managing
the coup plot against Obiang. Thatcher was fined the equivalent of £265 000
in January 2005 for breaking South Africa’s anti-mercenary laws by providing
funds for a helicopter for the operation. He denied knowing about the coup
plot, but was given a four-year suspended jail sentence in a plea bargain.
But it is the role of the ZDI in the whole scheme of things that is likely
to attract attention.
The Zimbabwean arms manufacturer is said to have had an “excellent
working relationship” with the alleged coup plotters, raising further
questions about whether this was a one-off transaction or part of a
long-running business association between the two sides. Zimbabwe military
sources told The Zimbabwean On Sunday last week that Harare, like Pretoria,
was aware of the coup plot and was even willing to sell the arms to the
insurgents until the deal went sour at the last minute. “Both (President
Robert) Mugabe and former South African president Thabo Mbeki knew about
what was going on and only decided to turn on the mercenaries after it
became clear that Equatorial Guinea’s military intelligence had also
received word of the planned coup,” one source said.
South African intelligence services had apparently known about the
coup plot since mid-2003 and even offered tacit support, according to some
of Mann’s fellow mercenaries. ZDI was created in 1984 by the Ministry of
Defence to provide the Zimbabwean army and airforce with supplies ranging
from small arms and ammunition and landmines to camouflaged combat clothing
and rocket launchers.