Unravelling the riddle of Simon Mann

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President Obiang accuses Ely Calil, a Chelsea-based tycoon, of plotting a coup to vault his friend Severo Moto into power in return for oil concessions. Both men rubbish the allegation. Details are murky but there is strong evidence of a two-pronged plot. Since last year, Nick du Toit, a South African former mercenary, has forged ties with one faction of the ruling clan involving fishing rights and customs control. It is rumoured that his real task was to somehow nobble the military, especially the president's Moroccan bodyguards, to clear the way for a small invasion force.

The second prong was to be led by Du Toit's former commanding officer at Executive Outcomes, Mann. Allegedly promised $5-million at meetings with Calil and Severo Moto last year, he recruited 66 veterans of apartheid South Africa's bush wars, many of them black mercenaries from Angola and Namibia. They are thought to have trained at a farm south of Johannesburg. The alleged plan was to collect a consignment of AK-47 rifles, mortar bombs and 30 000 rounds of ammunition and fly to Equatorial Guinea.


Relatives of those in Harare say that the men were on their way to Congo to guard diamond mines, so there was nothing sinister about the $190 000 Mann has admitted paying the state-owned Zimbabwe Defence Industries for weapons. "They were set up," says Alwyn Griebenow, their lawyer. However, a written confession purportedly from Mann and dated March 9, which was leaked to a South African newspaper, admits the coup plot. Griebenow says it had no legal standing and prosecutors had not cited it. In the only public hearing so far, Mann rebuffed journalists with the words "I have nothing to say." One observer said he looked like Richard Burton in The Wild Geese.

Doubters of the coup plot point to anomalies. Some of the arrested men were in their 60s and unfit. Many had good jobs and did not need the money. The flight plan went only as far as Burundi. These are intriguing points, but explainable by haste and incompetence: "Amateur hour. It was doomed to fail because they had absolutely no respect for operational security. Everybody knew it was happening," scorns one aquaintance of Mann, one of several security sources who claims to have known of the coup months in advance.

One version is that South African intelligence infiltrated the group and tipped off Harare and Malabo. Another is that Mann's arms deal was not squared with key players in Zimbabwe who therefore sabotaged it. Another is that the plotters were manipulated by Malabo's ruling family.

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