As he shuffled into court, his hands and legs chained, Nick du Toit looked a
broken man. Gone was the tall and well-groomed former soldier in the
photograph carried by his wife, Belinda, the anxious witness to every day of
her husband's trial.
Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, is the sort of place that wears a
man down. In the colonial days this fetid west African coastline was known
as the white man’s grave. In this modern age, incarceration in Malabo’s
notorious Black Beach prison is a similarly desperate prospect.
Certainly it is for du Toit, a white south African mercenary, who neared the
end of his trial last week with little hope of avoiding a lengthy jail
sentence — or even the death penalty. “I wouldn’t recognise him for the same
person,” said Belinda, fighting back tears.
Stacked at the front of the court on Friday was a selection of the weapons and
equipment — axes, sledgehammers, rocket launchers, walkie-talkies, batteries
and machineguns — that du Toit’s fellow conspirators had allegedly tried to
bring to Equatorial Guinea from Zimbabwe last March.
Du Toit’s alleged partner in the plot, Simon Mann, 51, is meanwhile enduring
the scarcely more cheerful surroundings of Harare’s Chikurubi prison, where
he too could face a long sentence, having been found guilty of attempting
the illegal purchase of some of the weapons on show in Malabo.
Mann’s friend Sir Mark Thatcher — the former prime minister’s freewheeling
son, whom he knew affectionately as “Scratcher” — is also in deep trouble,
currently under house arrest in his sumptuous South African home.
For all three men it has been a spectacular fall from grace. Indeed, the
extraordinary saga that the African prosecuting authorities allege took them
there is straight out of an airport paperback thriller.
It is a tale of greed, violence, betrayal and international intrigue. It also
says much about the changing face of Africa.
Though it is hard to imagine that the principle players will ever look back on
it with affection, it should sound the death knell for the white mercenary
there.
THE genesis of the coup lay in secret discussions in Madrid last year at the
villa of Severo Moto, the self-styled president of the Equatorial Guinea
government in exile.
Moto, 60, has long sought the overthrow of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema,
the country’s brutal president, whom he accuses of human rights abuses,
including torture and cannibalism.
In 1997 Moto was arrested by the Angolan authorities who found him on board a
boat carrying a consignment of arms reportedly for use in a coup attempt.
“Of course he was behind the latest coup, he does nothing else. He makes
another attempt every six months,” said Adolfo Marugan, director of the
Association for Democratic Solidarity with Equatorial Guinea.
Moto was conspiring again “in or about” April 2003 when he met Mann, an old
Etonian and member of the Watney’s brewing empire, in Madrid.
Details of this meeting — and subsequent alleged developments — are contained
in a writ for damages served by the Guinean government in the High Court in
London. It is based on du Toit’s confessions to his interrogators in
Equatorial Guinea and, therefore, according to its critics, cannot be relied
upon as it was obtained under duress. Key elements of it were corroborated
by independent sources, however.
Also present, according to the writ, was Ely Calil, a multimillionaire
businessman of Lebanese descent who lives in London. Calil denies any
involvement in the plot.
There are obvious business attractions in Equatorial Guinea, which has emerged
in less than a decade as Africa’s third largest oil producer, exporting
350,000 barrels a day. It was this prize — or at least a slice of it — that
is thought to have brought Calil and Mann to Moto.
Moto is said to have emphasised the dreadful human rights situation. Mann and
Calil were introduced to Moto’s old friend General Sargosa, a former head of
security, who had fallen foul of the president and had allegedly been forced
to watch Obiang rape his wife. Mann and Calil were also told how Obiang
enjoyed eating human testicles.
According to lawyers acting for Guinea, the three men struck a simple though
extraordinary deal at the Madrid meeting. Calil and Mann would arrange a
military coup to put Moto in power in Guinea in return for a lump sum
payment of $16m (about £9m).
Mann, a mercenary and adventurer, would also be handed the rights to supply
Guinea’s future security needs and Calil — who made his fortune trading
Nigerian oil — would become the country’s chief oil broker.
“Severo Moto agreed personally and/or on behalf of others to pay substantial
amounts of money to Mr Mann and his nominees for effecting the coup. Mr Mann
and Severo Moto further agreed that Mr Mann be lucratively employed in EG
after having effected the coup and further be granted immunity from
prosecution in EG for any act in or associated with the coup,” states the
High Court writ.
With the deal sealed, Mann and Calil are said to have immediately set about
raising the funds needed for the putsch. Aircraft, weapons and men would all
need to be bought and independent investors would be needed to help pay for
it.
According to the Guinean authorities, Mann set about pitching the deal to his
society friends in London and Cape Town with typical vigour.
“Simon would have six ideas before breakfast and would soon have funding for
them,” said an acquaintance last week. “He was a whirlwind.”
The basic deal proposed was that 10 investors would each contribute £100,000.
In return they would share £15m between them on the coup’s completion. There
would be more money later as the oil began to flow.
One businessman who admits being approached by Mann is Gianfranco Cicogna, a
South African telecoms tycoon who has a home in west London. He was once
engaged to the television presenter Tania Bryer and is well known on the
London social scene.
“I did not really appreciate the grandeur of their ideas,” said Cicogna, who
insisted he didn’t hand over any money. Asked if he knew that there were
plans to stage a coup, he said: “Not really. I don’t think it crossed my
mind.” There was a discussion with Mann about a further meeting, but it
never took place.
Another name caught in the web is Jeffrey Archer, the disgraced former
Conservative party chairman. A person by the name of J H Archer, his full
initials, is shown in company documents to have transferred £74,000 to
Mann’s company Logo Logistics just four days prior to the attempted coup.
Archer’s spokesman has responded simply that he was unaware of any plot.
Others from whom the Guinea government is seeking damages include Greg Wales,
Mann’s former accountant, a British businessman with extensive interests in
Africa.
The biggest fish to have become entangled in the scandal, however, is
Thatcher.
He is a friend and neighbour of Mann in Constantia, Cape Town’s most affluent
neighbourhood, its vast whitewashed villas one of the last outposts of
ostentatious white privilege in South Africa.
It was at Thatcher’s £2m thatched villa that a special judicial investigation
unit known as the Scorpions came knocking last week, demanding the
combination to the huge safe in which he kept his files. He is now under
house arrest as investigators concentrate their inquiries on his papers.
“Thatcher definitely knew the money was for a coup. There was $275,000 in two
payments,” claimed a spokesman for the Scorpions yesterday. “It is not a
vague connection . . . There are invoices from various transactions to him
and receipts.”
Thatcher has denied involvement, however, through Lord Bell — his mother’s
former spin doctor — and his lawyer.
Whether or not Thatcher was involved, pledges for the necessary investment in
the coup were quickly won by Mann and Calil, according to the Guinean
government.
Serious logistical planning started on or about October 21 last year, when
Logo Logistics is said to have transferred $15,000 to MTS, a South African
shell company run by du Toit.
Mann had long enjoyed a fruitful business relationship with du Toit. A former
officer in the apartheid-era South African defence force, he had worked for
Executive Outcomes (EO), the international “security” firm co-founded by
Mann that provided hired guns to corporations and states in African trouble
spots.
As well as supplying mercenaries to fight in Angola during the 1980s, EO
became mixed up in the Sandline scandal of 1998, when it was accused of
sanctions busting in Sierra Leone.
It is through EO that Mann was able to add to his considerable inherited
wealth. Apart from his substantial villa in Constantia, he also owns
Inchmery, a former Rothschild estate on the banks of the Beaulieu river in
Hampshire.
Du Toit proved invaluable to EO because of his experience commanding South
Africa’s notorious 32 (“Buffalo”) regiment.
Disbanded by F W de Klerk, the last white president, in 1993, it was used to
fight rebels in Namibia, where it earned the epithet “the terrible ones”. A
favoured Buffalo regiment trick was to hang rebels by their ankles from
flying helicopters to make them divulge their secrets.
Through du Toit, EO had drawn heavily on these hardened fighters to staff its
operations, and it was to du Toit that Mann is said to have turned again in
October last year.
He did so, it is alleged, without regard to the Foreign Military Assistance
Act, a South African law that since 1998 has outlawed any local company from
providing military assistance to individuals or groups outside the country.
Mann and his associates, however, seem to have been blind to South Africa’s
determination to stamp out its legacy as a recruiting ground for
mercenaries.
Under Mann’s plan for the overthrow of the Guinean government, du Toit would
recruit all the men necessary for the mission — about 80 in total.
From these du Toit would take an advance guard of 15 who, like a Trojan Horse,
would then enter Guinea in the guise of being involved in a tourist
business. Once they were installed, Mann would fly in under cover of
darkness with the rest of the men. The president would be nabbed in his bed
and Moto installed.
Du Toit has described in his confession about how a government minister,
Antonio Javier Nguema, “would guide the mercenaries directly to where
President Obiang would be sleeping. The mercenaries would then capture
Obiang, together with his brother Armagol and his son Theodore. President
Obiang would then be flown to Spain, if not killed in this operation”.
It all sounded so simple, if not simple-minded.
With du Toit signed up, what Mann needed next was transport and weapons.
Through another South African contact, Henry van der Westhizen — described
by one acquaintance as a “military version of Arthur Daley” — Mann and du
Toit were introduced to Tshinga Dube, the director of the Zimbabwean state
arms maker, Zimbabwean Defence Industries.
Harare was the vital link: a 727 airliner bought by Mann would refuel there
and pick up 150 hand grenades, 80 60mm mortar bombs, 100 RPG-7 anti-tank
projectiles with 10 launchers, 20 light machineguns, 61 AK47 assault rifles
and 75,000 rounds of ammunition.
Mann and his team also needed a helicopter to fly Moto into Guinea on the
night of the coup, and it is here that Thatcher is alleged to have been of
particular help.
Among the variety of South African businesses he was involved in was an air
ambulance service called Triple A Aviation. In January this year, Triple A
signed a contract to provide aircraft and aviation services to Mann’s Logo
Logistics company.
Thatcher’s friends insist, however, that this only involved the provision of
an air ambulance.
According to prosecutors, the plotters had everything they needed in place by
January. On March 4 du Toit and his advance party made their way to Malabo.
Their cover was a fishing and hunting business that du Toit had set up with
the help of Obiang’s cousin.
While du Toit waited in Malabo, 64 mercenaries boarded an old US Coastguard
Boeing 727, which Mann had bought from a company in Kansas for $400,000, and
took off from Wonderboom airport near Pretoria to Harare.
The 727 had been refitted with a pressurised cargo hold, so that weapons
stored in it could be accessed in-flight, and the engine power had been
boosted so it could use short runways.
There was allegedly another Thatcher-Triple A link to the plot. The pilot of
the 727, Niel Steyl, is not only a former employee of EO but is also the
brother of Crause Steyl, head of Air Ambulance Africa, the trading name of
Triple A Aviation.
Mann had gone ahead to Harare. As the 727 taxied into the military wing of
Harare International airport on March 7, he was there to meet it with his
arms cache.
The plan, say the authorities, was for the weapons to be loaded and for Mann
and his men to fly into Malabo at the dead of night.
While they were in the air, du Toit and his team would seize control of the
airport, change the control tower’s frequencies and prepare to guide in the
727.
Once reinforced with the second mercenary group, a quick attack on the
presidential palace would seal the fate of Obiang and his family.
Moto — who according to some accounts had already by this time been flown to
Mali in a plane provided by Triple A — would then be escorted in aboard
Thatcher’s helicopter. By morning there would be a new government in Guinea.
Du Toit said in his subsequent confession: “Mr Severo Moto would then do a
national broadcast through the local TV and radio network, informing the
people about the coup d’état.”
The reason he had to make this confession is that the attempted coup did not
go as planned. The conspiracy had probably been compromised long before
Mann’s jet left South African airspace.
Once on the tarmac in Harare, the plane was surrounded by armed troops. Mann,
the three flight crew and all 64 mercenaries on board were arrested and
their weapons seized.
In Malabo, too, du Toit and his 14-strong group were arrested next day and
thrown into Black Beach prison.
It was an ignominious end for the inglorious mercenary careers of all involved
— and a spectacular public relations victory for the pariah governments of
Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea. What had gone wrong? Was it a sting? Had
Mann blundered into a trap? For a short while, Mann was treated as a hero in
some sections of the British media. Anyone arrested by one African pariah on
his way to overthrow another automatically was credited with that status.
Now, however, his halo is somewhat tarnished.
Both he and du Toit gave lengthy and detailed statements to investigators in
Harare and Malabo, enabling the two governments to build a coherent legal
case against them.
While Mann gave the detailed description of how he had met Moto and plotted
the coup after becoming convinced of the need for regime change in
Equatorial Guinea, du Toit explained the true nature of Triple Option
Trading, the fishing business he used as cover to enter the country.
Mann, described by one acquaintance as “a plucky type from the old school”,
scrawled a letter to his wife and lawyers, demanding they get people on the outside
to exert influence for his release.
The letter proved both explosive and hilarious. Not only did it refer to a
friend called “Smelly” (believed to be Ely Calil), but it also mentioned a
contact called “Scratcher” (the nickname Mann had long used for Thatcher, on
account of the acne he suffered while at school).
It was the interception of this note on its way out of the prison by Mann’s
guards that is said to have led directly to Thatcher’s arrest last week.
“Our situation is not good and it is very URGENT,” Mann wrote. “They (the
lawyers) get no reply from Smelly and Scratcher (who) asked them to ring
back after the grand prix!” Mann went on to suggest that Scratcher had some
financial interest. “It may be that getting us out comes down to a large
splodge of wonga! Of course investors did not think this would happen. Did
I? “Do they think they can be part of something like this with only upside
potential — no hardship or risk of this going wrong.
“Anyone and everyone in this is in it — good times or bad. Now it is bad times
and everyone has to F-ing well pull their full weight.”
The letter also refers to David Hart, the old Etonian millionaire who advised
Lady Thatcher during the miners’ strike in the early 1980s.
“We need heavy influence of the sort that . . . Smelly, Scratcher . . . David
Hart (can provide) and it needs to be used now.”
A YEAR on and for a group of men so confident of success and of their
invincibility, the botched coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea has proved a
humbling and ruinous experience.
Mann, who was found guilty of arms smuggling charges last Friday, faces a
lengthy sentence at the pleasure of President Robert Mugabe. Du Toit is in
Obiang’s hands and will hear his fate tomorrow, while Thatcher faces
possible ruin at the hands of the Scorpions, as they sift through his house
for evidence implicating him in the plot.
So what went wrong? How could men so wealthy and powerful get mixed up in the
bizarre and risky actions that are alleged? Arrogance may be to blame. The
plotters appear to have been badly out of tune with the new South Africa, in
which latter-day dogs of war can no longer assume immunity from prosecution.
It hardly seems possible that the power shift in that country’s politics — the
transformation of the African National Congress (ANC) from rebel movement to
the dominant power on the continent, with all the need for respectability
that this entails — could have escaped the attention of the gilded circle
living under Cape Town’s Table Mountain. But when it comes to intellect, few
would accuse Mann or Thatcher of being among the sharpest tools in the box.
Friends of the alleged plotters were this weekend pondering their claims of
innocence and wondering what went wrong.
Were western governments involved? American, British and South African
intelligence allegedly knew about the plot. Taking a strictly pragmatic
view, rather than risk disruption to the flow of Equatorial Guinea’s oil
output, did they tip off its dictator that he faced yet another plot? Or, to
the contrary, did western governments quietly give the nod to the attempted
coup, while remaining firmly on the sidelines? Moto was on close terms with
Jose Aznar, the former Spanish prime minister, according to Spanish media
reports. Indeed, sources at the centre of the affair say that Spain was
planning to issue an international warrant for the arrest of Obiang while he
was visiting Morocco for medical treatment — in a repetition of the arrest
of Chile’s General Pinochet in London.
In the Bushlander, a favoured watering hole in the outskirts of Pretoria for
apartheid-era soldiers, the hard men propping up the bar are none too clear
on the details of the coup attempt — but they are certain they know why it
went wrong.
They say it had been the subject of gossip among the mercenaries for months
before Mann, du Toit and his men set off on their mission. Jokes about Mann
“going fishing” in west Africa or “exporting agricultural equipment” were a
dime a dozen.
“Everyone knew about this job months before it got going, and everyone advised
Simon Mann and the others it was foolish. Security was compromised and the
odds were too high,” said a former South African defence forces officer.
Supporting this line, some have claimed that the three white men have been
stitched up by an elaborate African intelligence sting, and that they were
really only planning a security operation in the Democratic Republic of
Congo.
As for the alleged backers of the coup, they were keeping their heads down
last week as news of their involvement spread across the globe. Wales, the
accountant, has said his only role was to help form du Toit’s fishing
company, while Calil has defiantly vowed to counter sue the government of
Equatorial Guinea for defamation.
“There never was any substance to the allegations that Calil had anything to
do with any plot anywhere,” said a close friend of the millionaire. “Forget
the plots and allegations. Calil does not consider himself a good friend of
Simon Mann.”
And what of Mann’s desperate plea to Smelly from jail in Zimbabwe? “Mann never
called him ‘Smelly’ to his face,” said the friend.
