Mann arrives home, pointing finger at Thatcher

Mercenary Simon Mann flies in from Equatorial Guinea, his five-year jail ordeal over

LAST UPDATED 5:40 PM, NOVEMBER 4, 2009

Simon Mann, the Old Etonian pardoned by President Teodoro Obiang for his part in a failed plot to overthrow him in 2004, flew into Luton airport today amid reports that his family and friends had paid £200,000 to the Obiang regime to secure his freedom, having negotiated the fee down from several millions over the past two months.

Mann arrived by private jet from Malabo, the capital of the oil-rich west African state where he spent 15 months in jail for his part in the failed coup. He had been sentenced last summer to 34 years.

Despite his ordeal - more than a year in the notorious Black Beach prison, where torture is the norm, following four years in an equally miserable jail in Harare - he was said to look "fine" after the six-hour flight from Equatorial Guinea.

Before he left Malabo, he told reporters that he is keen to help the authorities bring Sir Mark Thatcher, son of the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and the Lebanese businessman Eli Calil to trial. He claims they were the financier and brains behind the coup attempt and he was merely following instructions.

Police from Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command unit will question Mann about his allegations. Even if the coup was intended to overthrow a brutal despot - and they don't come much nastier than Obiang - it would be an offence under British law if it was planned in Britain.

Despite this threat, Thatcher, who is now based in southern Spain, said yesterday that he was "delighted" that Mann would be reunited with his wife Amanda and their children – the youngest of whom, four-year-old Arthur, he has never seen. Calil also said he was "thrilled" at the news of Mann's freedom.

On his release from prison yesterday, Mann said he "regretted" what happened in 2004. "It was wrong and I'm happy that we did not succeed." He also thanked the Malabo authorities, saying he was "extremely grateful" not only for his pardon "but for the way in which I've been treated from the moment I arrived here in Equatorial Guinea in 2008".

It is thought the timing of Mann’s release was dictated by the planned visit to Malabo today of South African President Jacob Zuma. Four of Mann's fellow mercenaries, all South African, were also pardoned by President Obiang, among them Nick du Toit, Mann’s second-in-command.

Mann can now expect a bidding war for his story – that of a former Eton-and-Sandhurst SAS officer, son an England cricketer, who became a mercenary. The operation to seize control of Equatorial Guinea, Africa's third-biggest oil producer, ended in his arrest – and that of his army of mercenaries - on the tarmac of Harare airport, where they had stopped to pick up firearms en route.

LAST UPDATED 5:40 PM, NOVEMBER 4, 2009

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Wishing you the speediest of returns back to the UK Simon, I hope you are swiftly re-united with your wife and your son, who you have never seen, and a fantastic first evening with friends and family. Then I hope you wake up in the middle of the night, stumble blindly unfamiliar with your surroundings not being a prison cell, stub your toe, get an infectious blood disease from it and die! Mercenary Simon Mann flies in from Equatorial Guinea, his five-year jail ordeal over ordeal? Aww diddums. Did the nasty men treat you all horrible, just 'cause you tried to pick up guns in Harare to go onto violently overthrow another country? Honestly, these Africans have no respect for ex-Etonians. I'd lie my way out of things and implicate everyone you can, make yourself look like a helpless pawn in someone else's game. Look forward to reading the book at Christmas, hopefully the royalties will be donated to a worthy cause.

Posted by Hugh Glorry at 10:19pm on November 4, 2009

Good heavens, Hugh Glorry, are you trying to be witty? There must be some excuse, I suppose, for your seemingly deliberate attempt to ignore what everyone else recognises. Simon Mann (an old-Etonian, incidentally, not "ex-") was granted the Queen's commission and served this country in a British regiment. He set out to remove from power a dictator whose reputation, in a continent where dictators set high standards of awfulness, is unequalled even by his Zimbabwean friend. The Intelligence services of both the UK and the US knew exactly what was planned and their democratic masters approved. Who would not? You write that you hope he will die and you style him "Mercenary". Mercenaries have an honoured place in history. As Housman reminds us - "Their shoulders held the sky suspended; They stood, and earth's foundations stay ; What God abandoned, these defended ..."

Posted by William Hogarth at 10:53am on November 5, 2009

What a strange reaction by Hugh Glorry, a coup in Africa is like sneezing they happen all the time, there is nothing special in a coup, since the nineteen sixities there must have been hundreds throughout the continent. I suspect his anger is racist as Mr Mann and some of his co-plotters are white. The Mail names a NIgel Morgan, a fellow coup-plotter and former Irish Guards officer who tipped off the South African authorities. That alone will make an interesting story.

Posted by Deloki at 1:11pm on November 5, 2009

What right has Britain got to go and overthrow leaders, no matter how horrible they are, all over the world. Do you think you still have the Empire..? Wrong. Guys like Mann are so used to projecting personal power thru the gun, that once they take off their uniform they cannot percieve life without having to order people around. I should know, I carried a gun for a long time, and once I put it down (27 years ago), it took me a long time to become human again. Anyway, the whole affair smacks of a 'black war' being carried out by the foreign office (i'm sure some bowler hatted guy must have boasted to the yanks his prowess in africa and must be carrying out the 'dare' thru thatcher and other mis-guided-over-the-hill 'imperial' dreamers). Wake up dear Brits, and smell the coffee...it comes from 3rd world countries...Africa, for example.

Posted by ASSAD REHMAN at 10:56am on November 6, 2009

Assad Rehman makes nonsensical claims on the basis that "I should know, I carried a gun for a long time ..." after which, he writes, it took him "a long time to become human again." No one in my family or among his friends ever doubted my son's humanity during and after the nine years he carried a gun, and no one is aware of any doubts being expressed of mine after carrying a gun for 51 years. If Assad Rehman has psychological problems he should not blame a weapon -- he should see a doctor.

Posted by William Hogarth at 4:43pm on November 7, 2009