Coup plot Briton faces Guinea jail
By David Blair in Johannesburg
Daily Telegraph/UK
(Filed: 21/05/2005)
Simon Mann, the former SAS officer accused of planning a failed coup
in west Africa, faced the revenge of his alleged target yesterday
when Equatorial Guinea’s regime formally applied for his extradition.
If this succeeds, Mann will leave Zimbabwe, where he is serving a
reduced, four year sentence in relatively benign conditions, for
Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea.
Here, Amnesty International says that prisoners are in danger of
starving to death. They survive on daily rations recently reduced from
a cup of rice to one or two bread rolls. Since February, inmates at
Black Beach have routinely gone without food for up to six days at
a time.
But Zimbabwe said there was no legal barrier to extraditing Mann,
an Old Etonian and former member of the SAS.
“The process of extradition follows set procedures in domestic and
international law and if it follows those procedures, it is possible
in this case. In principle, it can be done,” said Sobuza Gula-Ndebele,
Zimbabwe’s attorney general.
Mann, who holds British and South African citizenship, was arrested at
Harare airport last March, along with 69 other alleged mercenaries. The
men were on board a Boeing 727, supposedly bound for Equatorial Guinea
where they would have overthrown the oil-rich dictatorship of President
Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Mann, 51, was convicted for trying to buy “weapons of war” and
consigned to Chikurubi maximum security jail outside Harare. But he
has been spared the worst of African prison life.
Mann inhabits a single cell and his lawyers have been allowed to
supply him with books and food during their unrestricted visits.
Zimbabwe knocked three years off his initial, seven-year sentence.
The other alleged mercenaries arrested with Mann were released last
week after being convicted of lesser offences.
Equatorial Guinea, by contrast, conducted a sweep of its capital,
Malabo, and rounded up 14 men, all South Africans or Armenians. They
were convicted for being the alleged coup’s advance party of
mercenaries. Nick du Toit, a former soldier in South Africa’s special
forces, received a 34-year sentence on the strength of confessions
which he says were extracted under torture.
He is now in Black Beach prison where, if the extradition succeeds,
Mann will join him. Last month, Amnesty protested about the treatment
of Black Beach’s inmates. “Many are extremely weak because of torture
or ill-treatment and because of chronic illnesses,” said Kolawole
Olaniyan, the director of Amnesty’s Africa programme. “Unless immediate
action is taken, many of those detained there will die.”
Zimbabwe has no formal extradition treaty with Equatorial Guinea. But
Mr Gula-Ndebele said it was on a list of “designated countries” to
which Zimbabwe was willing to transfer prisoners. Equatorial Guinea
was added last year, within weeks of Mann’s arrest.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress