Dogs+of+war+shown+as+braying+asses,+Sunday+Times

Sunday Times, Johannesburg, 25/06/2006
=Dogs of war shown as braying asses=


 * A new book on a failed coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea in 2004 reveals plotter Simon Mann’s plan to seize the island, and his avaricious scheme to keep it, writes Rowan Philp. But, as author Adam Roberts relates, arrogance on the part of the conspirators ensured that the only coup pulled off that day was by the South African intelligence service**


 * "‘The level of indiscretion was shocking, unbelievable — I mean, their plot was actually debated in a fairly public meeting in London a few weeks earlier, when a South African foreign policy advisor said it was known that mercenaries were planning to invade’"**

THE plotters dumped Sir Mark Thatcher at a boozy meeting at the Butcher Shop and Grill in Sandton, after coming up with a new plan.

So the son of the former British prime minister wasn’t invited to the real powwow, at a Wimpy restaurant in a Pretoria suburb, in February 2004, to discuss the planned overthrow of Equatorial Guinea.

At that meeting, point man Nick du Toit used an operational map of the capital, Malabo, that he had borrowed from the wall of a Murray & Roberts office, and dished out pay-as-you-go cellphones to the mercenaries.

Then Simon Mann reminded the plotters that they would be acting for the good of the oppressed people of the country.

They were going to oust dictator Obiang Nguema and replace him with an honourable man of the cloth.

Mann’s contract with “president-in-exile” Severo Moto — signed on July 22 2003 — reflected his noble intentions: just $1-million reward for 13 months of dangerous toil.

But, locked in Mann’s Johannesburg office, was a second, more secret contract — bearing only his signature and also dated July 22 2003.

In terms of this one, Mann would get $15-million for himself, and the exclusive right to supply equipment and training to the new defence force, in which he would be given a senior rank.

A bizarre sort of new constitution for the country, written by Mann’s pal, Greg Wales, accompanied the contract.

The constitution said the country should be ruled by a company, headed by Mann, in which the president would be a figurehead, and the citizens hold no shares.

This is among dozens of jaw-dropping claims made about the attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea in a new book, The Wonga Coup, by British journalist Adam Roberts.

On March 7 2004, the attempt to oust the government of the oil-rich West African state collapsed when Zimbabwean police stormed a passenger jet in Harare, arresting Mann and 63 other mercenaries.

Days later, two dozen other plotters, under Du Toit’s leadership, were jailed in Malabo, while Thatcher was later charged with — and convicted of — helping to finance the attempt.

Due for release in South Africa in the middle of next month, the book is strewn with detail that could be used in the trial of the mercenaries, which is slated to start in South Africa in August.

In an interview in London this week, Roberts — former South African bureau chief for The Economist — said the book was the result of 18 months of interviews, “an incredible mass” of plotter documents, and the collaboration of mercenaries.

Roberts said he discovered that:


 * Thatcher — who pleaded guilty to having funded a helicopter for Mann — believed the relentless Scorpions prosecution of him was solely motivated by the personal malice of President Thabo Mbeki, who blamed his mother for prolonging apartheid. Thatcher said: “A member of the investigating team ... described to me how Mbeki bore such animus towards my mother.”
 * Novelist Frederick Forsyth personally funded a real — and virtually identical — coup attempt on Equatorial Guinea in 1973, and published his own plot in the bestselling The Dogs of War. Confronted with formerly secret British security papers unsealed after 30 years, Forsyth for the first time admitted his role — including posing as a South African mercenary to negotiate with arms dealers in Hamburg.
 * A charge has been registered against two of those involved, Greg Wales and David Tremain, at the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court — but few outside the justice system — including the accused — know about it.
 * Author Lord Jeffrey Archer has been linked to a payment of £135000 to the project.

Said Roberts: “This coup must have a thicker paper trail than any other in history — there were contracts and records drawn up and kept for almost everything.”

Roberts admits that he never made it into Malabo — which sits on an island — after being turned away by officials in Equatorial Guinea as he was boarding a plane there, and told the government “would not allow British journalists in”.

Nor was he able to interview Du Toit or Mann, who are still in jail.

Instead, his tale is built largely on interviews with Crause Steyl, Mann’s chief pilot; Nigel Morgan, a South African National Intelligence Agency (NIA) informant; Johann Smith, Obiang Nguema’s informant; Thatcher; and Scorpions investigators.

He relied, too, on documents from Mann’s Johannesburg office.

In one key admission, Steyl told Roberts how he and others had debriefed mercenaries who had attempted a coup of their own on the island of São Tome shortly before the planned Mann action.

“The guys who did that coup, we spoke to them. They said [the military part] was pretty easy, but we were supposed to look at the politics. That was Greg’s job.”

The book also details how Mann bankrolled a trip by Wales to the US “to gauge the reaction of American officials to a coup”.

Included, too, is a confession by Mann to Zimbabwean authorities that “the South African government [has] recently contacted Severo Moto stating [its] support for him and inviting him to meet the President of South Africa”.

Plotter Louis du Preez confirmed to Roberts, he said, that the plotters believed “the [South African] authorities had okayed it”.

Said Roberts: “They truly believed they had at least tacit clearance from the South African government.”

Sensationally — although it does not claim the briefing itself as fact — the book also claims that plotter Henry van der Westhiuzen told Mann and others that he had briefed Bulelani Ngcuka, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, on part of the plan.

Van der Westhiuzen told his co-conspirators that he had received “no warning to stop”, the book claims.

Roberts also reveals that the plotters gossiped and bragged openly about their scheme in restaurants across South Africa — and that Mann himself had dinner with a known NIA informant two nights before the operation.

Said Roberts: “The level of indiscretion was shocking, unbelievable — I mean, their plot was actually debated in a fairly public meeting in London a few weeks earlier, when a South African foreign policy advisor said it was known that mercenaries were planning to invade.”

Roberts suggests that the NIA had set up the mercenaries virtually from the start, allowing them to believe that the South African government would not oppose the toppling of a corrupt dictator.

Then, on the day of the raid, they simply tipped off Zimbabwean police, who were able to net 64 unarmed mercenaries — many of them playing cards or sleeping at the time — in a laughably easy sting operation.


 * The South Africans’ motive?**

Aside from scoring a coup of their own, Roberts alleged, it would foster good and lucrative relations with both Nguema and Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe, while underscoring its stance against the Iraq invasion with action against forced regime change in its own backyard.

Roberts said that, while the plotters’ intelligence was dire, the one thing they did get right was keeping Thatcher — who drew a lot of attention — out of the loop.

Roberts said Thatcher was incredibly bitter at what he saw as the South African witch-hunt against him.

In the book, Thatcher — who has since been barred from the US and Monaco, and seen his marriage collapse — states: “[My mother] eclipsed the ANC policy stance; for that, the Thatcher family supposedly earned Mbeki’s eternal fury. Why was my fine 75 times greater than someone [Steyl] who admitted to having Severo Moto on his plane?

“Why haven’t any of the 6800 South African mercenaries in Iraq been arrested? The prosecutor’s office gave me this figure, so they know it. Why? Because it doesn’t suit the President’s agenda.”

But Roberts said even Thatcher’s friends no longer wished him well.

“What struck me was how little his colleagues and so-called friends thought of him,” he said.

Roberts said he had thought this odd — until Thatcher casually told him he would need “a new dental surgeon” if he published unflattering anecdotes about him — and that his legs would be chopped off if he linked Thatcher to the coup.


 * From: http://www.sundaytimes.co.za/Articles/TarkArticle.aspx?ID=2117578**

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