'I was held in Black Beach jail'

Simon Mann, the former British SAS officer accused of plotting a failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, has been extradited secretly from a Zimbabwean prison to face charges in the West African nation, his lawyers said today.

Mann was collected from Chikurubi maximum security prison shortly after midnight by officers of the notorious Law and Order Section and taken to the Zimbabwe Air Force’s Manyame base, just south of Harare. He was flown out on a military aircraft after being handed over to Equatorial Guinea officials.

The handover came hours after Mr Mann, 55, lost an appeal against extradition in the Zimbabwean High Court, where his legal team argued that he would face torture and a likely death sentence in a nation with one of the worst human rights records in Africa. His lawyers, who denounced the move as illegal, were to lodge a further appeal with the Supreme Court when they discovered he had already been flown out of the country.

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“It was abduction,” said Jonathan Samkange, Mr Mann’s lawyer. “I am furious, and I am ashamed that our Government should resort to these tactics.”

Mr Samkange was in the Harare court again today to demand an order that Mr Mann be returned to Harare. He vowed to pursue the case to the International Court of Justice.

It is believed highly unlikely that any court decision will affect the will of Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the President of Equatorial Guinea, to have Mr Mann tried for attempting to overthrow his Government, and have him incarcerated in Black Beach jail, where, according to the International Bar Association, torture is routine and deaths of prisoners due to abuse and neglect are common.

“His health is poor,” said Mr Samkange. “He could stand it [Guinean prison conditions] mentally, but not physically. If he is still alive, they are torturing him now.”

Mr Nguema came to power in the tiny West African country in a violent coup in 1979, ousting his uncle, whom he had shot by a firing squad.

Mann, a veteran of several ill-fated African business expeditions involving guns, was arrested at Harare airport in March 2004 as he and 70 former commandos of the apartheid-era South African special forces, attempted to load firearms on to an Antonov aircraft, allegedly on its way to Malabo, the Guinean capital, to mount a swift attack on the presidential palace and open the way for the installation of a Spanish-based Guinean opposition leader.

Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British Prime Minister, pleaded guilty in a brief trial in South Africa in 2005 to unwittingly financing the purchase of a helicopter meant to fly in the opposition figure after Nguema’s arrest.

Mann and his accomplices were jailed in September 2004 for various firearms, aviation and immigration offences. Mann received four years and was at the end of his sentence and about to be released when a court was convened to hear an application for his extradition to Equatorial Guinea, in terms of a hastily concluded pact between the two countries.

The magistrate gave her ruling in favour of extradition in a matter of days, ignoring volumes of evidence from Mr Samkange of the brutal treatment of political prisoners in Equatorial Guinea —including 20 of Mann’s alleged advance group waiting to strike in Malabo — and of a judiciary made up of political appointees with scant legal knowledge.

Mr Samkange got wind of a plan to extradite Mann covertly that night, without an appeal and managed to get late-night court orders to stopped his deportation. This time, Mr Mugabe’s legal and security agents succeeded.

Yesterday afternoon Mr Samkange drove to Chikurubi prison to brief Mann on plans for an appeal to the Supreme Court, Zimbabwe’s highest court. He was told that Mann was no longer there. He immediately began habeas corpus applications to have the authorities produce him in court. “The whole of yesterday I was looking for him, and they never told me,” he said.

“I was not advised, the British Embassy was not advised, and he was not allowed to communicate with his lawyer,” Mr Samkange said.

When the security police came to fetch Mann after midnight, he refused to go with them. “They told him that where they were going he could telephone me,” Mr Samkange said. “They lied.

Mr Patel had given Mann an earlier undertaking that he would be given seven days' notice before his extradition. Instead, according to another affidavit, he telephoned Police Commissioner Augustine Chihuri to advise him that Mann’s appeal had been dismissed and he could be deported forthwith. “Patel played the most important role in this,” Mr Samkange said.

The entire judicial process “was politically guided,” he said.

“Arrangements [for Mann’s removal] had been made before we even went to court. They didn’t want to waste time. I can only conclude that someone was pulling strings."

Western diplomats believe that the delivery of Mann to Malabo has been paid for by Guinean oil for Zimbabwe’s stricken economy. Press reports here have confirmed the delivery of fuel, but few details have emerged.

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