State papers: Robert Mugabe was allowed 'relaxing break' in Tony O'Reilly's mansion

Although Mugabe was hailed as an African liberation hero as a result of his early political career, he was regarded as a brutal dictator by the time of his death in Singapore at the age of 95 in 2019. File photo: AP/STR

Irish businessman Tony O’Reilly allowed the controversial African leader, Robert Mugabe, to stay in his luxury country house in Co. Kildare in 1992 in order to allow the Zimbabwean president to get over the death of his first wife.

Newly-released State papers show the well-known Heinz executive and former owner of Independent Newspapers offered Mugabe the use of his 18th-century mansion in Castlemartin as well as his private jet to allow the president "a relaxing break".