Ex-SAS mercenary loses latest extradition fight

Former SAS officer Simon Mann has lost the latest round in his legal battle to avoid being put on trial in a west African country that accuses him of planning a coup.

Mann is currently serving a four-year jail sentence in Zimbabwe after being arrested when he arrived there to collect weapons.

In May last year a magistrate ordered his extradition to face another trial in Equatorial Guinea but permitted an appeal to the High Court.

In her ruling on that appeal late yesterday, Judge Rita Makarau said the government of Equatorial Guinea had established Mann had a case to answer for leading a coup plot to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Ngeuma that warranted extradition to face trial there.

His lawyer Chris Venturas said he lodged a further appeal today at the Supreme Court, Zimbabwe’s highest court, against the ruling.

Mann, a friend and associate of Baroness Thatcher’s son Mark, was arrested along with 70 others when their aircraft arrived at Harare’s main airport to collect weapons bought from Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer.

Mann’s lawyers had argued he would face torture and a likely death sentence if extradited to Equatorial Guinea, a nation with one of the worst human rights records in Africa.

At Mann’s initial extradition hearing last year, Equatorial Guinea undertook to provide an independent judge selected by the African Union. It also said the death penalty would not be applied if Mann was convicted of allegations of terrorism and leading the 2004 coup plot.

Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court in 2005 to unwittingly helping to bankroll the coup attempt. He was fined and received a suspended sentence. All 70 other alleged mercenaries – mostly former soldiers in regional armies - were freed and deported after serving minor sentences in Zimbabwe for aviation, immigration and weapons possession offences.

Until the Supreme Court decides whether to hear a new appeal, acting Attorney General Bharat Patel promised that Mann, 54, would be given seven days notice of extradition to face trial in Equatorial Guinea, Mr Venturas said.

“We are now waiting for the Supreme Court to respond. We have noted all the misdirections in the judgment,” he said.

Mr Venturas said Mann did not appear in court yesterday and his health was “fine” after being held at the harsh Chikurubi maximum security prison outside Harare since 2004.

Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea only signed an extradition treaty after the mercenary suspects were jailed in Zimbabwe. Since then, several shipments of petrol have arrived in Zimbabwe, which is suffering acute fuel shortages, under a trade deal between the two countries.

Equatorial Guinea has sentenced 24 other suspected mercenaries from European and African nations to lengthy prison terms related to the coup plot.