Action urged over jailed mercenary

A number of Tory MPs are putting pressure on Ministers to take tough and immediate action to save the life of a jailed British mercenary.

Simon Mann is believed to be being held in the notorious Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea.

The MPs warned that the 55-year-old's life is in serious danger and condemned the "kidnap" of an EU citizen.

They said quiet diplomacy had failed and urged Foreign Secretary David Miliband to take a stand by recalling UK diplomats from the country.

Mann, an old Etonian and former SAS officer, is alleged to have plotted a failed coup in the country in 2004.

He was taken there last week after Zimbabwean authorities secretly deported him after blocking attempts by his solicitors to bring an appeal against his extradition.

Meanwhile, Equatorial Guinea has said Mann will go on trial in the African nation charged with plotting to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

It is the first official acknowledgement of Mann's extradition transfer from Zimbabwe last week.

The government said in a statement that he would be tried for his "abortive mercenary coup attempt against the regime and democratic institutions of Equatorial Guinea in 2004".

Earlier, the Law Lords refused to go on hearing a case brought by Equatorial Guinea because lawyers are being refused access to Mann.

They adjourned the case indefinitely unless the oil-rich African state agrees to honour assurances given on Wednesday that lawyers would have access.

Mann is a respondent in the case in which Equatorial Guinea is appealing in the Lords over a refusal by the courts to allow it to bring a damages action over the coup.

Raising his plight in Commons exchanges on coming parliamentary business, Mann's MP, Tory frontbencher Julian Lewis, said: "He has completed his jail sentence in Zimbabwe but has been transferred by the Mugabe regime to a potentially terrible fate in Equatorial Guinea."

This was despite the fact that his appeal processes were incomplete and in contradiction of assurances to the British ambassador, he told MPs.

Mr Lewis continued: "Quiet diplomacy has failed and we now have to save this man, whatever he has and hasn't done, from torture and a horrible death on a terrible situation."

Commons Leader Harriet Harman pledged to alert Mr Miliband to MPs' concerns.

© Independent Television News Limited 2008. All rights reserved.