Simon Mann pardoned over Equatorial Guinea plot

Tue Nov 3 2009 13:33:55

British mercenary Simon Mann has been pardoned for his part in attempting to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.

The ex-SAS officer was jailed for 34 years in July last year for helping plan a coup in the tiny west African country.

President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said he had freed Mann, a friend of ex-Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher's son Sir Mark Thatcher, for compassionate reasons.

Equatorial Guinea's communication ministry said in a statement: "The pardon was allowed for by presidential decree and granted on humanitarian grounds."

The old Etonian was originally arrested with around 70 other people, mostly former soldiers, when their aircraft arrived at an airport in the Zimbabwean capital Harare in March 2004.

At first Mann denied that the group had come to collect weapons for a coup, claiming they were on their way to the Democratic Republic of Congo to help secure diamond mines. But he was jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe for conspiring to buy weapons.

Mann said he suffered a violent abduction in February from Chikrubi prison in Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea.

During his trial Mann told the court he was not the main man behind the plot, and said Sir Mark Thatcher was "part of the management team" and "not just an investor".

Sir Mark was given a suspended sentence in South Africa in relation to the funding of Mann's operation, though he has always denied any knowledge that a coup was being plotted. South African arms dealer Nick Du Toit was sentenced to 34 years in prison.

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