Campaign begins to ‘buy’ Mann out of prison
By Jane Flanagan in Johannesburg and Philip Sherwell, Chief Foreign Correspondent

Sunday Telegraph/UK
(Filed: 12/09/2004)

A campaign to “buy” Simon Mann out of his Zimbabwean prison cell has
been launched by wealthy friends who fear for the life of the Old
Etonian former SAS officer if he has to serve the seven-year term
handed out in Harare on Friday.

Family and supporters of the British leader of an alleged coup plot in
Equatorial Guinea believe that the appalling conditions in Chikurubi
prison will take a heavy toll on his health.

“We’re also taking as deadly serious the threats against his life
that some of the other defendants have been making,” said a close
friend. The 66 South Africans jailed with him for between 12 and 16
months months blame the 51-year-old scion of the Watney’s brewing
empire for their incarceration.

Friends have told Mann’s heavily-pregnant wife Amanda that they
will try to get him back to the family estate in Hampshire within a
year. His lawyers are not appealing against the sentence for illegally
trying to buy weapons for £100,000 in Harare in March.

Instead, they will approach businessmen and lawyers with access to
President Robert Mugabe to find out how they can secure Mann’s early
return to Britain. “We are determined to get him out of there,”
said the friend.

Although he did not go into details, it is believed that this could
involve business deals with leaders of the near-bankrupt state and
political pressure exerted through influential friends. Mr Mugabe’s
regime has already benefited materially from the arrest of Mann with
the seizure of his Boeing 727, worth about £1.5 million, and $180,000
(£100,000) in cash found on board.

Mann’s sentence was far more severe than his family and friends had
anticipated – even with time off for good behaviour, he is expected
to serve at least four years.

The arrest of his friend and former Cape Town neighbour, Sir Mark
Thatcher, in South Africa last month delivered a big setback to
sensitive behind-the-scenes efforts to secure a deal minimising his
likely sentence.

Sir Mark has denied any link to the plot to overthow President Teodoro
Obiang, the dictator of the small oil-rich west African state.

At his own request, Mann has been held in solitary confinement in a
fetid cell measuring 13ft by 4.5ft since his arrest at Harare airport
on March 7.

Prison guards have broken up a number of scuffles during previous
court appearances when the men had access to Mann. Their conviction
on aviation and immigration charges is likely to make them even more
hostile, as most had expected to be freed at Friday’s hearing.

Conditions inside the prison are squalid in the extreme. The buckets
that double as latrines often remain unemptied for weeks; the cells
lack light or ventilation and are freezing in winter and boil in
summer; lice and mosquitos thrive, feasting on the bodies of prisoners
who sleep on concrete floors without blankets or mattresses.

Inmates normally receive just one meal a day, usually gruel and
vegetables, while the most basic human comforts such as toothpaste,
soap and toilet paper are only available to those who can bribe prison
guards. Beatings are frequent.

These are now the living conditions of a man who should have been
sitting on his 20-acre estate on the Beaulieu river awaiting the
birth of his seventh child this weekend. The pictures of a gaunt
wild-haired Mann arriving for sentencing on Friday showed the impact
that six months inside Chikurubi have already had.

The campaign to free him will be expensive, but Mrs Mann wishes to
avoid selling Inchmery, the family home. Instead, she is understood
to hope that after his release, his memoirs would repay the debts.

Meanwhile, the Telegraph has learnt fresh details of how the ill-fated
plot fell apart in early March. Mann and some of his men were on
standby to fly to Equatorial Guinea to provide a “guard force” for
Severo Moto, the country’s Spanish-based opposition leader, after
what was supposed to be a domestic coup against President Obiang,
according to another Western businessman involved in the plans.

At the time, Dr Moto was waiting at a hotel in the Canary islands
with a group of fellow exiles and a handful of British and South
African business advisers. They were expecting the arrival of two
government ministers from Equatorial Guinea with news that there had
been a rebellion against the Obiang dictatorship. Meanwhile, in Malabo,
the capital of Equatorial Guinea, several leading members of Obiang’s
regime, including close members of his family, were making their own
plans to flee.

However, shortly before the Moto party learnt that Mann had been
arrested, they were also told, without explanation, that the two
ministers could not make it as far as the Canaries. So the Moto party
instead flew to Mali to meet them.

They arrived at the airfield at Bamako, the Malian capital, but again
there was no sign of the ministers, so the group reluctantly returned
to the Canaries.

There they heard even worse news. Not only were Mann and the other
alleged mercenaries in prison in Harare, but a party of 15 South
Africans and Armenians had been arrested in Malabo and accused of
planning the coup. “We realised the plans were still-born,” said a
member of the group. Dr Moto’s King Air jet was flown by Crause Steyl,
a South African pilot and businessmen who has been questioned by
police in Cape Town about Sir Mark Thatcher. Mr Steyl has said that
his company, Air Ambulance Africa, or Triple A Aviation, received
£140,000 from Sir Mark which was then passed to Logo Logistics,
a firm owned by Mann. Sir Mark has said that he believed that the
deal only covered the supply of an air ambulance.

Friends of Mann insist that his first destination after picking up
weapons and his men in Harare was eastern Congo, as he has stated. But
only some of them were to be dropped off there, to guard a mine, while
Mann and the rest would await the expected call to fly to Malabo to
provide security for Dr Moto after a coup.

Indeed, after years of talking about buying his own aircraft to make
just this sort of logistical “bus run” across Africa, he had only
just bought the Boeing 727 that was seized in Harare.

Additional reporting by Katharine Houreld in Malabo