British financiers 'hatched 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.

The alleged plan: send in a motley crew of European, Asian and African mercenaries to force out the oil-rich ruler of one of the world’s most corrupt regimes – and, in his place, install a more malleable opposition figure.

The prize – an in for deals with Africa’s third-largest oil producer and the hundreds of millions of dollars it earns annually from a West African petroleum boom that has given the nation of 500,000 the world’s fastest-growing economy.

But if there was any plot, it went disastrously wrong.

The outcome has left Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, under house arrest in South Africa, where he was charged yesterday, accused by South Africa and Equatorial Guinea of being the plot’s top moneyman.

For 89 other Britons, South Africans and other Europeans and Africans, the alleged plot has brought them to the worst pass an alleged soldier of fortune can reach: chained up in dank African prisons, facing possible decades in prison, and, for one defendant, death.

A 91st defendant, a German, died shortly after his arrest in March. Authorities in Equatorial Guinea blamed his death on malaria and “complications”. Witnesses told Amnesty International he was tortured to death.

News of Thatcher’s pre-dawn arrest in Cape Town, South Africa – police found him at home in his pyjamas – appears to have only stoked Equatorial Guinea’s already evident enthusiasm for the trial.

“All steps will be taken to bring to justice those responsible, however highly placed,” a European lawyer representing Equatorial Guinea president Teodoro Obiang said outside the courtroom in Malabo.

Equatorial Guinea attorney general Jose Olo Obono, conducting the prosecution, repeatedly waved off reporters seeking comment. But Olono’s questions of the defendants – forlorn-looking veterans in shackles and overgrown beards – grew from pointed to shouted during yesterday’s session.

Most coups in Africa are family affairs, or emboldened power grabs by embittered army officers. In fact, Obiang got the job in 1979 by executing the former president – his uncle.

This plot was different, say Equatorial Guinea officials.

Testimony has implicated in the plot two international financiers: Eli Calil, a British citizen who made a fortune dealing in African oil, and Thatcher, accused previously of dealing weapons during his mother’s tenure as Britain’s prime minister.

Prosecutors in Equatorial Guinea and in Zimbabwe say the two worked with Simon Mann, a former pupil of Eton who, apart from a short stint as an actor, has lived most of his post-school days by the gun – after leaving the British special forces he became a mercenary, fighting in African conflicts fuelled by oil and diamonds.

Together, they picked a second-rank Equatorial Guinea opposition figure, Severo Moto, who lives in exile in Spain, as the country’s next leader.

“The people behind this were financial people, and they wanted to institute Severo Moto as the next government,” Nick du Toit, a South African arms dealer who is facing the death penalty for his alleged role in the plot, testified at the trial.

Armed soldiers lined the walls and slouched in the galleries of the courtroom as du Toit testified. Foreign diplomats watched and listened.

Du Toit cited what he said were Mann’s sketchy accounts of other foreign backers. Despite the US-oil company-led development boom here, Obiang, accused by Global Witness and others of pocketing most of the country’s oil wealth, appeared to have few firm friends.

Du Toit said Mann claimed Spain had promised to recognise the Moto government, and testified that unidentified ”higher-ups” in the United States had also given their blessing.

Du Toit – whose wife says prison guards stomped off his toenails in torture sessions – has given the prosecution its only evidence so far of any coup plot. His testimony – after Thatcher’s arrest in South Africa – marked the first mention of his name in trial.

Du Toit said Mann introduced him in July 2003 to Thatcher, who was interested in buying military helicopters for a mining operation in Sudan.

Equatorial Guinea has taken steps to have Thatcher extradited, officials say, although no arrest warrant has been issued.

Together, du Toit said, he and Mann recruited scores of old apartheid-era South African army veterans for alleged coup, and bought up dozens of AK-47s, bazookas and other weapons from Zimbabwe’s military.

Mann, who is being tried in Zimbabwe, has said the weapons were for a contract to guard a mine in Congo.

Du Toit, greying like most of the other Cold War and apartheid-era veterans on trial, has moved to clear his co-defendants in Equatorial Guinea, saying they knew nothing of the true reason they were recruited.

The alleged plot was foiled on March 6, after South Africa tipped off Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe about the planned coup.

Verdicts in the trial are expected on Saturday.