Wonga trial brings fresh humiliation for Thatcher

Three years ago on a balmy January day, the champagne flowed at Simon Mann's drinks party around the swimming pool of his Cape Town villa.

For Mann, a member of Britain's special forces-turned soldier of fortune, they were heady times, as he mixed business with pleasure and set about raising money to topple the fabulously rich leader of Equatorial Guinea by force.

The Wonga Coup, as the botched attempt would hilariously become known, was an audacious attempt by white expatriates to grab a slice of Equatorial Guinea's oil riches. With the exception of the mode of transport - aeroplanes and helicopters rather than a naval cutter and inflatable landing craft - the Wonga attempt would follow, almost to the letter, the plot of Frederick Forsyth's Dogs of War. Forsyth's novel was based on an earlier abortive coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, in which the author was peripherally involved.

The botched plot, in 2004, involved a number of wealthy public figures in South Africa and Britain, the most prominent of which was Mark Thatcher, who escaped with a slap on the wrist after he admitted unwittingly bankrolling the coup attempt. Mr Thatcher was but one of the celebrities and financiers targeted by Mann - he lured them with the prospect of returns of several hundred per cent on their investments.

Last week Pretoria's regional court heard from a state witness Crause Steyl, how Mr Thatcher was extremely nervous in his dealing with the people involved in the alleged coup plot.

Steyl, who pleaded guilty under a plea bargain to involvement in a coup attempt and admitted supplying the plotters with mercenaries and air assistance, described how the former prime minister's son had a lot of "nervous twitches" when they met at Lanseria airport near Johannesburg in December 2003 to arrange financing for a helicopter to be used in the plot.

Steyl was testifying in the trial of eight men accused of contravening sections of South Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act.

"He [Mr Thatcher] was concerned once the helicopter was acquired on whose name it was going to be registered - anyone but his," Steyl said. "He wanted to know if we knew what we were doing."

Mr Thatcher handed over $275,000 (£140,000) to pay for the chartering of the helicopter which was to be used to transport coup personnel around.

Equatorial Guinea's leader, President Teodoro Obiang is going after the alleged conspirators through the courts. His tiny country of half a million people has the highest per capita income in Africa because of taxes on the oil revenues of Western oil companies - Exxon and Marathon. But unfortunately, writes the International Monetary Fund in its country report, "this wealth has not even led to a measurable improvement in living conditions".

Political opponents of President Obiang are likely to end up chained to a wall at the notorious Black Beach prison. A UN report found that "methods of torture include beatings, applied particularly to the soles of the feet, electric shocks applied to the genital organs and hanging of the detainees by their feet or arms".

Last week, a court heard that the former government of Spain - the old colonial power - played a role, and that the plot was known in advance to British and South African intelligence.

The coup attempt failed when Mann and 65 others were arrested at Harare airport and charged with illegal arms exportation and immigration offences. Now a court in Harare is considering whether Mann - who is completing a jail sentence in Zimbabwe - should be extradited to Equatorial Guinea.

Mann is desperately fighting an extradition request by President Obiang. Mann had planned to lure the President, whom he knew, to the airport of the capital Malabo to inspect four-wheel-drive vehicles he claimed to be delivering. Mann's lawyers protest that he would be subject to torture if extradited.