Equatorial Guinea said today it had requested international arrest warrants for Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister, and other Britons implicated in a coup plot.

Hatched by Old Etonians and other members of the British political and financial elite, an alleged scheme to seize control of Equatorial Guinea flush with petrodollars was no ordinary African coup plot.

A trial in Africa’s biggest mercenary case in decades has opened in Equatorial Guinea, with soldiers of fortune from Europe, Africa and Asia accused in an alleged plot to take control of oil-rich country.