Thatcher's Son Arrested in E.Guinea Coup
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| Wed, 08-25-2004 - 8:42am |
Can he wiggle out of this one?
I met with Thatcher, says alleged coup leader.
http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=15&art_id=qw1093431421759B225
Malabo - Newly accused coup plotter Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, met with the alleged top conspirator in the months before an alleged foiled coup plot in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, a lead defendant testified on Wednesday.
Nick du Toit, a South African arms dealer facing the death penalty in Malabo for his alleged role, said in court that Thatcher was interested only in purchasing military hardware that was not involved in the alleged coup plot.
"Not at all, this was a normal business deal," du Toit said answering attorney's questions about whether the contact were about the coup plot.
Eighty-nine men are on trial in Equatorial Guinea and Zimbabwe for an alleged internationally backed conspiracy to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third-largest oil producer. Defendants include Britain's Simon Mann, on trial in Zimbabwe as the alleged top planner for the coup attempt.
South Africa announced on Wednesday that authorities there arrested Thatcher in connection with the coup.
Du Toit told the court on Wednesday that Mann had brought Thatcher to him in July 2003 in South Africa. But Du Toit said he was interested only in buying military helicopters for what Thatcher said was one of his mining deals with Sudan.
Lawyers for Equatorial Guinea said the country may pursue extradition of Thatcher.
Profile: Sir Mark Thatcher.
Playboy-turned-businessman dogged by rumours of financial impropriety.
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,9174,1290430,00.html
Prior to today, Sir Mark Thatcher's most notable incursion into the national consciousness was when he went missing in the Sahara desert in 1982, while his mother, Margaret Thatcher, was prime minister.
The 29-year-old was competing in the Paris-Dakar rally, when his white Peugeot 504 went missing on January 10 near the Malian-Algerian border. Mrs Thatcher put out a statement saying she was "very upset and very distressed" - but continued her prime ministerial duties as normal.
After six days, his car was spotted by planes as he, his co-driver and their mechanic were running short of food and water. His father, Denis, flew him back to the UK in the Algerian presidential plane, as Mrs Thatcher told waiting reporters the scare had "put other personal worries into perspective".
Born in 1953, Mark Thatcher is one of twins - his sister Carol went on to become a journalist, and, briefly, girlfriend of disgraced Tory minister Jonathan Aitken.
Mark was educated at Harrow, a prestigious public school. Academically unexceptional, he excelled at racket sports, and acquired a taste for fast cars which was later to get him into trouble. He crashed twice after he took up the sport seriously in the 1970s, while also training for a career as an accountant with Touche Ross.
After emigrating to the US, he dated a string of eligible American women before marrying Diane Burgdorf, a millionaire heiress to a second-hand car dealership, on St Valentine's Day in 1987.
The couple settled down in Dallas, Texas, with Mark's company, Monteagle Marketing, pushing whisky and clothing lines and bringing him a small personal fortune.
But hit controversy in 1984 when the Observer alleged that he benefited from his mother's position when a large construction deal in Oman was awarded to a building firm, Cementation, with which he was involved, after Mrs Thatcher visited the tiny Gulf state. The accusations were never proven.
Further controversy dogged him through his friendship with the Middle East businessman Wafic Said - a quiet-spoken Syrian with close links with Saudi royalty.
Among other business ventures in the 1980s, he was involved in several large-scale arms deals, most notably a £20bn contract between British Aerospace and Saudi Arabia.
Although rumours of impropriety have dogged his business career, he largely disappeared off Fleet Street's radar after moving to the US.
But it is recorded that his wealth grew to the point where he spent periods as a tax exile in Switzerland.
In the 1990s he helped secure the multimillion pound contract for his mother's Downing Street memoirs, but after the failure of a security alarm business in the US and a prosecution for tax evasion, Mark, his wife and their two children moved again - this time to South Africa.
Three years after the move to Cape Town, in 1998, he was investigated by South African police over a money-lending business to police officers. He counter-claimed that officers working for him as agents had defrauded him and the investigation was eventually dropped.
He returned to the UK last July for the funeral of his father, Sir Denis, a former oil businessman, who died aged 88. He then inherited his father's title to become Sir Mark.
Sir Mark, who was known as "Thickie Mork" among other nicknames at Harrow and who has been criticised for his lack of charm, was once described by the Financial Times as "a sort of Harrovian Arthur Daley with a famous Mum".
A devoted Lady Thatcher, however, has always had faith in him. "Mark could sell snow to the Eskimos, and sand to the Arabs," she is reported to have said.
His notoriety was not welcomed by Sir Bernard Ingham, Lady Thatcher's former press secretary.
Asked by Sir Mark how he could best help his mother win the 1987 general election, Ingham reportedly replied: "Leave the country."


Update: Thatcher yet to be extradited.
http://www.reuters.co.uk/newsPackageArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=573199§ion=news
MALABO (Reuters) - Equatorial Guinea says it has requested the international arrest of more foreigners it suspected of plotting to topple its president, but has not yet asked South Africa to extradite Mark Thatcher.
Thatcher, the 51-year-old son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was arrested at his Cape Town home on Wednesday on suspicion of helping to fund the alleged plot.
Asked if Equatorial Guinea had applied for international arrest warrants for others it suspected, including London businessmen Eli Calil and Greg Wales, Second Deputy Prime Minister Ricardo Mangue Obama Nfube said on Saturday:
"We have asked for the international arrest of all those involved in this mercenary coup."
But he played down speculation that Equatorial Guinea, sub-Saharan Africa's third largest oil producer, was on the point of seeking Thatcher's extradition.
"We cannot do it simply because he has been arrested. We have to study the whole situation. We have to weigh all the elements," he told a news conference in Malabo.
"Equatorial Guinea, up to now, has not requested the extradition of Mark Thatcher," he said.
The country has requested the extradition of Simon Mann, a former British special forces officer accused of leading the coup plot who was found guilty in Zimbabwe on Friday of seeking to possess dangerous weapons, Mangue Obama said.
A French lawyer advising Equatorial Guinea has said there had been "first contact" with South Africa over Thatcher's possible extradition, but said any request would depend on the outcome of South African police investigations.
South Africa abolished the death penalty in 1994 and has said it would not extradite any suspect to a country where they might face execution -- which lawyers have said could be possible if Thatcher were sent to Equatorial Guinea.
The tiny nation, split between volcanic islands and a mountainous jungle mainland, is trying 14 suspected foreign mercenaries accused of planning to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo and replace him with an exiled opposition leader.
State prosecutors have demanded the death penalty for one of the men.
British mercenary leader Simon Mann, a neighbour of Mark Thatcher, was jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe today for conspiring to buy weapons of war.
http://212.2.162.45/news/story.asp?j=117121870&p=yy7yzz576&n=117122630
The Eton- and Sandhurst-educated former SAS captain was arrested in Harare as he allegedly prepared to launch a coup against oil rich Equatorial Guinea’s dictatorial president.
The two pilots of a cargo plane that landed in Zimbabwe carrying dozens of suspected mercenaries in March were jailed for 16 months.
The 65 men who were on the plane, convicted of immigration offences, were given 12-month sentences.
Magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe sentenced Mann, 51, in the makeshift court inside the Chikurubi maximum security prison near Harare.
Mann showed no emotion as the sentence was read out.
From special forces commander to soldier of fortune, Simon Mann’s colourful career reads like a thriller.
Born to a world of wealth and privilege, he made his own fortune in some of Africa’s bloodiest wars – and even enjoyed a stint in the movies.
He was jailed today for his connection with a bizarre plot to overthrow a dictator in a tiny African backwater – a case that has also ensnared Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.
For Mann, it has been a stunning downfall.
The alleged plot against Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, a despot with reputed cannibalistic tendencies, appeared to carry the promise of vast riches - access to the offshore oil of Africa’s third-biggest oil producer.
Instead, Mann – suspected of masterminding the coup attempt – faces the prospect of prison in a country known for horrific human rights abuses.
Mann appeared bespectacled and bedraggled, dressed in prison-issue khaki shirt and shorts – a far cry from the debonair adventurer described by acquaintances.
His lawyers claimed he had been denied adequate food and clothing, and some of Mann’s 69 co-accused have allegedly been beaten at the maximum security Chikurubi prison, where he is likely to serve out his sentence for trying to buy arms from Zimbabwe’s state arms manufacturer.
Mann, the son of former England cricket captain George Mann and heir to the Watney brewing fortune, graduated from elite Eton College and Sandhurst military academy.
The 51-year-old father of six went on to a distinguished military career which reportedly included service in Cyprus, Central America, Germany and Northern Ireland.
He left the military in the 1980s, returning only briefly to work with British commander General Peter de la Billiere during the Gulf War.
From there, Mann drifted into security work, providing bodyguards to wealthy clients.
In the early 1990s, he helped set up Executive Outcomes and later Sandline International, two security consultancies that recruited among former South African military forces who found themselves out of work after apartheid ended in 1994.
Executive Outcomes earned millions from the Angolan government by guarding oil installations against rebel attacks, while Sandline is believed to have participated in Sierra Leone’s bloody civil war.
Mann also had a detour in the limelight, taking a small role as a British officer in the 2002 film Bloody Sunday about the conflict in Northern Ireland.
During this period, Mann took up residence in the plush Cape Town suburb of Constantia, where his neighbours include Mark Thatcher, and Earl Spencer, brother of the late Diana, Princess of Wales.
Last month, South African authorities arrested Thatcher and charged him with helping to finance the botched Equatorial Guinea plot, an accusation he denies.
One of Mann’s former associates at Executive Outcomes, Nick du Toit, is now on trial for his life in the west African nation, where he has admitted plotting to overthrow Nguema, who seized power himself in a 1979 coup.
Mann and his co-accused, most of whom were arrested when their ageing Boeing 727 landed at Harare International Airport on March 7, denied they were preparing to launch a coup.
They claimed they were headed to security jobs at a mining installation in eastern Congo.
Mann admitted trying to buy assault rifles, grenades, anti-tank rocket launchers and other weapons from Zimbabwe Defence Industries – an offense punishable by up to 10 years in prison.