Coup plot: SA, Spain fingered
2008-03-11 22:42
London - A British former special forces soldier admitted his part in a failed 2004 coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in an interview broadcast on Tuesday, but denied he was the mastermind.
"I was involved and I was the manager... not the architect and not the main man," Simon Mann told Britain's Channel 4 News in an interview conducted in the jail where he is being held in the capital, Malabo.
The former Special Air Services soldier instead pointed the finger at the governments of former colonial power Spain and South Africa as well as Ely Calil, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman who has British citizenship.
He accused Calil of backing the exiled leader of Equatorial Guinea and of misleading him about the pressing need to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
The Spanish government described Mann's claims as "completely baseless" while South Africa said the allegations were "fabrication" in similar statements.
Calil said in a statement to the broadcaster that he had "no involvement in or responsibility" for the plot.
Mann, who is facing trial in the tiny African country, was arrested in March 2004 at Harare airport on a plane with 70 other mercenaries as they were en route to allegedly stage the coup.
Overturned a court injunction
He was convicted of buying illegal weapons and taken in secret to Equatorial Guinea earlier this year.
His old friend Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, pleaded guilty in 2005 to breaking South Africa's anti-mercenary laws, but escaped prison with a fine.
Mann said that while money was a motivating factor in his actions, the "primary motivation was to help, as I saw it, the people of Equatorial Guinea who were in a lot of trouble".
He described Thatcher as "a part of the team", and rejected reports that novelist Jeffrey Archer and EU trade commissioner Peter Mandelson had anything to do with the coup plot.
Channel 4 had to overturn a British court injunction banning the interview's broadcast after Mann's lawyers said he had only taken part under duress from the authorities.
His sister then went to the High Court in London to say he wanted the interview shown.