Destination Malabo

It was a Spanish territory for 190 years, though Spain repeatedly tried to offload it on other nations for a meager price. Graham Greene, who did clandestine work for the British government in western Africa during World War II, simply called it “the little dreadful Spanish island.” Spain was a callous colonial ruler, but it at least kept up the cocoa plantations and encouraged commerce. It was when the Spaniards left in 1968 that things really went south, and Equatorial Guinea came to be known as the “Dachau of Africa.” One aid worker declared, “On a scale of one to ten, even an African scale, it’s a zero.” In Malabo in 1971, an American diplomat stabbed his gay lover and embassy colleague 10 times with a pair of scissors. His (unsuccessful) defense was that living in Equatorial Guinea drove him insane.

So what happened? Well, stop me if you’ve heard this one before, but in the latter part of the 20th century, a colonial power became indifferent to its African territory. Independence loomed. The colonial power propped up the local leader they perceived to be most friendly to their interests. Elections were held. The newly elected African leader immediately began consolidating power. Democracy was strangled in the crib, and a brutal dictator emerged.

Where Equatorial Guinea departs from the standard African narrative is in exactly how brutal and capricious its newly installed dictator proved to be. The son of a witch doctor, Macías Nguema began as a populist politician among the Fang, the country’s largest ethnic group. His election in 1968 was hailed by Spain as “a peaceful, friendly, and constructive development.” He promptly kicked off an 11-year reign of terror.

Nguema flattened the cocoa plantations, outlawed fishing in an island nation, and destroyed all the industry. He had 10 of his original 12 cabinet ministers killed, banned Western medicine, and let cholera run amok in regions whose political support he doubted. He declared that “intellectuals are the greatest problem facing Africa today” and then forbade use of the word “intellectual.” He established links with the Soviet Union and kidnapped foreigners for ransom. He referred to himself as “God’s Unique Miracle,” shut down nearly all the country’s schools and churches-in the overwhelmingly Christian country-and once, according to the Financial Times, “unskillfully hanged” 150 people in a soccer stadium “to the strains of Mary Hopkin singing ‘Those Were the Days’ over the loudspeaker system.” A bit showy, you think? Perhaps, but it was Christmas. Reports indicate that Nguema was a keen practitioner of one of the local anthropological curiosities-cannibalism. This taste may explain his cherished skull collection.

By the time Nguema was deposed in 1979, a third of the country’s population-around half-a-million at independence-had been killed and another third had fled the country. Macías Nguema was removed in a bloody coup by his nephew, Obiang Nguema. Obiang had served in his uncle’s government and was complicit in many of his crimes. In power he has hardly shown himself averse to violence, torture, and corruption-there are allegations that he, too, is a cannibal and ate the liver of a political opponent in 1993. But, he has also shown himself to be concerned with the appearance of holding elections. Rigged elections, yes, but still elections. In May, the ruling party captured 99 of 100 seats in the country’s assembly. The government issued a press release: DEMOCRACY AT ITS PEAK IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA.

This darkest place on the Dark Continent, though, has been threatening to become a player in world affairs. Large oil reserves were discovered off the coast in 1996. Since then, this land where civilization fears to tread has been the recipient of $10 billion in foreign investment, and currently produces about 400,000 barrels of oil per day. Still, for most of the country it’s business, or the lack thereof, as usual. Per capita income is now second only to Luxembourg; a remarkable statistic considering Equatorial Guinea has the smallest proportion of GDP spent on health and education of any country in Africa. That’s probably because the country’s rulers are squirreling away all the oil money in foreign banks. In 2004, a money laundering investigation into Riggs Bank in Washington, D.C., called for $360 million of Equatorial Guinean funds to be frozen until their origin could be sorted out.

Despite the obvious corruption, the United States now considers the brutal backwater to be of major strategic importance, given the turmoil in world oil markets and the fact that China is taking an active interest in the region. In 2006, two months after Equatorial Guinea signed a major oil contract with the China National Offshore Oil Company, Obiang Nguema made an official visit to Washington. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Obiang a “good friend.”

And if you thought the small country’s history couldn’t get any more tragicomic, Equatorial Guinea was recently host to one of the most bizarre trials in recent memory. At issue is what role the governments of the United States, Spain, South Africa, and the United Kingdom played in the failed attempt by a marauding band of British and South African mercenaries to overthrow Obiang’s government.

Black Beach prison in Malabo is one of the country’s few notable addresses. It was Macías Nguema’s preferred execution spot and has housed two generations of political prisoners in near starvation conditions. Black Beach is currently playing host to the most illustrious prisoner in its history. He also happens to be guilty of the crimes he was accused of committing.

Simon Mann (1952-) does not have the typical mercenary’s pedigree. His father was the captain of England’s national cricket team and heir to the Watney Mann brewing fortune. Educated at Eton, Mann attended Sandhurst, took a commission in the Scots Guards, and eventually served in Britain’s elite Special Air Service (SAS).

Mann followed up his military career with a series of failed business ventures and a brief return to active duty during the Gulf war. Soon after, he became one of the principals in a private military company, Executive Outcomes. Clients included Texaco and De Beers, but the company wasn’t exactly discriminating. It was, however, effective. In the early 1990s, working on behalf of major oil companies and the Angolan government, Executive Outcomes reclaimed oil facilities seized by rebels in military operations of an unprecedented size for a private army.

In 1996, Mann created a subsidiary called Sandline and recruited a former lieutenant-colonel of the Scots Guards, Tim Spicer, to run it. While the point of the subsidiary was to distance itself from the shady reputation Executive Outcomes had acquired, Mann and Spicer set about doing their best to tarnish the new name. In 1997, Sandline received $36 million from the government of Papua New Guinea to end a revolt in Bougainville. News of the deal caused the army to revolt and forced the prime minister to resign. Spicer was arrested as soon as Sandline forces attempted to enter the country. His release was secured only after the British government intervened.

By the next year, Sandline was embroiled in a much bigger scandal, accused of violating a U.N. arms embargo in Sierra Leone on behalf of an Indian client himself accused of embezzling millions from a Thai bank. Still, Sandline operated in one form or another until 2004. That was the year Mann was arrested for masterminding an attempt to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea.

On March 7, 2004, Simon Mann and 67 South African mercenaries were arrested on board a Boeing 727 at an airport in Harare, Zimbabwe, en route to Equatorial Guinea. Mann was accused of trying to purchase a large shipment of weapons during their brief stopover in Zimbabwe. Already on board were hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of weapons and equipment, as well as $180,000 in cash.

The next day, a South African named Nick du Toit and 14 mercenaries were arrested as part of the advance team inside Equatorial Guinea. They were lying in wait, ready to seize the airport tower in Malabo and otherwise lay the groundwork for Mann’s planeload of soldiers to take over the country.

While these events raised eyebrows internationally, what really caught the attention of the world’s press came four months later when the South African police raided the home of one of Simon Mann’s Cape Town neighbors-Mark Thatcher, son of the former British prime minister. (Bizarrely enough, Obiang’s playboy son, Teodorin, also has a house in the same posh suburb, Constantia). Thatcher, who has amassed a sizable personal fortune in various businesses, has a checkered past involving accusations of loan sharking, Saudi bribes, and tax evasion.

Investigators had discovered a number of suspicious money transfers to Logo Logistics, a firm owned by Mann, just prior to the coup attempt. Investigators think that Thatcher contributed about $275,000 for the purpose of chartering a helicopter to be used in the coup. Thatcher maintained that he didn’t know the funds were to be used for the coup attempt, but eventually struck a deal and paid a $500,000 fine to the South African government, which has strict laws curbing mercenary activity.

Ely Calil, a Lebanese-Nigerian financier-under investigation at the time by the French government for shady oil dealings in Nigeria-also allegedly helped fund the plot. Calil is friendly with an Equatorial Guinean priest named Severo Moto who is in exile in Spain. The plotters had planned to install him as the country’s new ruler. In the 1990s, Moto had tried his own hand at overthrowing Obiang. He was arrested by Angolan authorities on a Russian fishing trawler full of arms and soldiers headed for his native country. After fleeing to Spain, he was convicted of high treason in Equatorial Guinea and sentenced in absentia to 101 years in prison.

And if Thatcher’s involvement wasn’t catnip enough for the British press, money transfers had been made to Logo Logistics by one J.H. Archer. Jeffrey Howard Archer, Baron Archer of Weston-super-Mare, is a disgraced British politician and hugely successful writer with many bestsellers to his credit as well as a stint in prison, having been convicted of perjury in 2001 in a case related to a libel suit against a newspaper for reporting his relationship with a prostitute. Archer is known to have been friends with Calil and Thatcher and has issued carefully worded denials about his involvement.

The failed coup had the potential to pay off handsomely given the oil revenues of Equatorial Guinea. But Mann’s plan was ultimately undone by its scale and by the dubious character of those involved. From mercenaries’ divey South African watering holes to the posh gentlemen’s clubs of London, the plot was the worst kept secret on two continents. It appears that both the U.S. Defense Department and the British Foreign Office were aware of the coup in advance. And even considering that Simon Mann had spent most of his adult life obliterating the fine line between profitable military adventures and hare-brained schemes, this was not a well-planned operation. A few months after Mann’s arrest, one observer writing in the New African wrote that the coup “could not have been surpassed in absurdity if cobbled together to form the fabric of a novel written to satirise Graham Greene, John le Carre or Ian Fleming.”

As it happens, Mann may have cobbled together his plan from the fabric of a novel-quite literally.

Frederick Forsyth is best known for his first novel, The Day of the Jackal, published in 1971-a major bestseller that spawned two movies. This gritty tale about an assassination attempt on French president Charles de Gaulle was peppered with astonishingly accurate details about the criminal underworld and revolutionized the political thriller. A former foreign correspondent with an obvious thirst for adventure, Forsyth remains cagey about what he did next. It appears that he may have taken his profits from The Day of the Jackal and funded his own unsuccessful coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea in 1973.

That year, British intelligence caught wind of a man in Spain first trying to charter and then to commandeer a privately owned former British naval vessel named the Albatross. The man in question, Alexander Ramsay Gay, ordered the boat to Gibraltar where it was loaded with fuel and other provisions. Gay later told the ship’s captain, a man named Allan, that he was to expect a large shipment of boxes from an arms dealer in Hamburg.

The British alerted the Spanish government, which detained the Albatross in the Canary Islands. Under questioning, the ship’s captain said Gay had threatened his family and that he had discovered maps of Fernando Pó in Gay’s cabin. Gay was taken back to Britain for questioning. According to some accounts, he was released only after Frederick Forsyth intervened on his behalf.

Less than a year later, Forsyth published a novel called The Dogs of War to instant acclaim. It tells the story of a small band of foreign mercenaries who take over an African country in order to seize a mountain containing $10 billion in platinum. Though set in the fictional African republic of Zangaro, the plot aligns closely with the 1973 coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, with the not insignificant difference that in the book the coup succeeds. But until recently, no one knew how close it was.

In 2005, Adam Roberts, an Economist reporter and author of The Wonga Coup-an excellent recounting of Mann’s escapade-unearthed the original British intelligence report filed from Gibraltar warning of the 1973 coup. In the book, Forsyth had an Albatross with a captain named Allen. Neither detail was public. For years, Forsyth denied any direct knowledge of the plan, chalking up his uncannily accurate details to meticulous research. Confronted with the Albatross particulars in a 2006 interview, Forsyth admitted that he knew Gay and that he made payments to men carrying out the coup “for information.” Still, he maintains he did not orchestrate it, telling Roberts, “I’m not sure if the authors of the plot listened to me or I listened to them.”

The idea of a private coup was less absurd in 1974 than one might imagine. Attitudes and politics in Africa were much different than today. There were an astonishing 110 coups attempted on the continent in the 1960s, and the 1970s weren’t much calmer. At the height of the Cold War, one African journalist quipped, “Africa grew bananas and coups.” African coups didn’t always grab headlines in Western newspapers, even when they were led by notorious mercenary figures like Mike Hoare or Bob Denard, who frequently had the blessing of Western governments.

Forsyth’s intentions seem to have been largely altruistic as there was no oil money to be had at the time, and his alleged plan for ruling Equatorial Guinea after the coup was actually not implausible. Forsyth cut his teeth for the BBC covering the war in nearby Biafra, and he emerged sympathetic to the Biafrans. He wanted to free the country from the horrific Macías Nguema and install Biafran leader Odumegwu Ojukwu. At the time, Equatorial Guinea was still host to thousands of Biafrans who had worked the cocoa plantations and would likely have supported the new leader, who would have then provided a refuge for the beleaguered Biafrans.

Forsyth told Roberts he was shocked to realize Mann’s plot “was almost the same, blow by blow, as my novel!”-and noted the similarities: the external financiers, funding through dummy companies, the lure of mineral wealth, the would-be leader in exile. It’s difficult to overestimate what a revered text The Dogs of War is in the military underworld. Any mercenary of note in the last 35 years likely has a dog-eared copy of the book in his kit.

And Forsyth is not completely removed from the mercenary game-or from Simon Mann. Following Sandline’s dissolution in 2004, Tim Spicer founded a new private military company, Aegis Defense Services. (It presently holds the largest private security contract in Iraq, nearly $300 million from the U.S. government.) Forsyth is one of a select few private investors in the company. Spicer has been questioned by the British Foreign Office about possible involvement in Mann’s coup, though no details have emerged connecting him to his old business partner.

Mann was well aware of the risks involved in trying to overthrow Obiang’s government. A document retrieved from the office of his home in South Africa after his arrest noted: “As it is potentially a very lucrative game, we should expect bad behavior; disloyalty; rampant individual greed; irrational behaviour (kids-in-toy-shop type); backstabbing; bumf-ing; and similar ungentlemanly activities.”

There’s no mention of hubris, however. As the plan progressed, it’s obvious Mann grew impatient and became willing to take increasingly large risks, and this was the proximate cause of the plot’s spectacular failure. Robert Young Pelton laid out the group’s original plan in his book Licensed to Kill: Hired Guns in the War on Terror, relying on the account of Crause Steyl, the former head of air operations for Executive Outcomes, who was piloting Mann’s Boeing 727 at the time of his arrest.

The night of the coup, “rebels” were to seize an airstrip in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Two planes would fly the 67 mercenaries from South Africa to Zambia where they would wait for the signal that the airstrip in the Congo had been seized. A third plane chartered by Nick du Toit, who had been sent into Equatorial Guinea months in advance to set up what appeared to be a legitimate business enterprise, would fly from Malabo to Harare to pick up the weapons cache needed for the coup. A fourth plane-an Ilyushin 76, a massive four-engine cargo jet-was also to carry six luxury SUVs from South Africa. The planes would eventually rendezvous at the airfield in the Congo. The men and weapons would be loaded on to the Ilyushin, and they would fly to Malabo, where the helicopter gunship Thatcher allegedly helped pay for would be in place to be used as air support and for medical evacuations if needed.

The SUVs were to be presented as a gift to Obiang on behalf of du Toit’s business. Once everything was in place and the Ilyushin on the ground in Malabo, Obiang would be lured to the airport to pick up his presents, where he and his security detail would be overpowered and held. The mercenaries would then hop in the SUVs and go about securing the military base and police stations on the island. A plane originating in the Canary Islands would fly in from Mali with Severo Moto on board a half an hour after they received the signal that the island was secure. After his arrival, Moto would take to the airwaves and announce what they hoped would be a peaceful transition of power. And 600 Spanish soldiers were to be waiting off the coast-the advance group of some 3,000 more-whom Moto would invite to the island to help restore the peace. (There’s no evidence of Spain committing soldiers to the effort.)

It was a complicated plan. But the beauty of it was that it allowed for many things to go wrong without compromising the whole. The parts were discrete, such that if the soldiers didn’t arrive on time or the arms shipment in Zimbabwe got fouled up or something went wrong with one of the planes, the mission could be aborted without threatening the overall plan. Too bad Mann didn’t stick to the plan.

Mann’s arrest in Harare in March 2004 actually occurred during the second attempt at the coup. In February, en route from Pretoria to Zambia, the plane carrying the mercenaries hit a bird, breaking off its nose wheel and stranding Mann’s army for hire. By then, Nick du Toit had already arrived in Harare to pick up the arms. Instead, he had to put the shipment on hold.

Mann returned home and decided that the plan needed to be simplified. The SUVs would be ditched so that a smaller plane than the Ilyushin could be used. They hatched a plan to get Obiang to a private dinner with du Toit and subdue him there. The mercenaries and the arms shipment would be on the same plane, bypassing the staging area in the Congo.

In March, Mann never managed to pick up the arms in Harare. An airport worker wondered why every single one of the dozens of windows on the Boeing 727 was shuttered. A quick investigation revealed that the plane was full of soldiers, and everybody on board was arrested. The government of Zimbabwe sent a television crew into the plane to document the scene. Mann was hauled off to a Zimbabwean jail, but not before he sent a message to du Toit telling him to call the whole thing off. It would prove to be in vain as du Toit was eventually arrested. Mann did get a message to the plane with Moto in Mali, allowing them to escape.

If overthrowing the Equatorial Guinean government proved tricky, it would have been a piece of cake compared with actually running it. In July 2003, Greg Wales, Mann’s accountant and business adviser, drafted contracts detailing how much the coup plotters would get paid by Moto. In total, Mann wanted at least $7 million, and a million dollars would go to each of three lieutenants. The 75 rank and file South African mercenaries would receive $25,000 each.

Wales laid their plans bare in what is known as the Bight of Benin Company document, dated January 2004. Much of Africa was colonized by private companies on behalf of their respective empires, and Wales modeled his business plan on the charters of old British trading companies and buccaneering firms. He outlined a plan for the new government that would keep Moto in check. The plotters determined that despite installing him as the country’s leader, they must retain “general legal power to run, alter, or effect any economic planning, regulatory, or other issue that we see as essential,” and that they must control “Army/Navy/Air Force Military Equipment Intelligence Palace Guard Other control functions: customs, airport and port security, maritime security, all of whom must be recruited and paid by us.”

The document also shows those behind the coup wanted to be highly deferential to the interests of the United States. “The more we can help to keep the heat off U.S.G. [United States Government], the better they will like it, and probably the more they will actively help us in the many ways we need them to.” The document also states that the United States “will be very upset at claims that it was behind it; such claims can be expected.”

In November 2003, Wales was seen schmoozing Theresa Whelan, the U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for African affairs at the International Peace Operations Association’s annual conference. It’s not known whether or not Wales broached the topic of how well the United States might receive regime change in Equatorial Guinea, but it certainly adds weight to Mann’s contention that the United States approved of the coup. Wales is, however, “prone to rambling lectures”-as Adam Roberts put it. Pelton notes that Wales has often drunkenly-and improbably-bragged of work he’s done on behalf of the CIA. Even if Wales isn’t credible, it’s nonetheless interesting that an accountant was suddenly so interested in making Whelan’s acquaintance.

Simon Mann remained in a prison in Zimbabwe until earlier this year, when he was quietly extradited to Equatorial Guinea. In late June, a gaunt and shackled Mann had a four-day trial in Malabo. He was sentenced to 34 years in prison-likely a life sentence for a 56-year-old Etonian in an African jail.

But things are actually looking up for Mann. He is said to lunch every day with Manuel Nguema Mba, Equatorial Guinea’s minister of national security, who is also Obiang’s uncle and one of the government’s most notorious torturers. (The lunches are catered from a nearby hotel owned by Manuel.) A lawyer in the country told the London Times that Mann’s trial was a “charade.” “He will be pardoned within a year, two at the most.” Many think Mann struck a deal with Obiang, in exchange for information about the plot and its backers. The Times further reported, “Diplomatic sources broadly concurred, though they thought Mann may have to serve three or four years.”

So the question is now, what does Mann know? During his trial, “Mann implicated the governments of South Africa and former colonial power Spain, and implied Washington would also have looked favorably on a coup,” according to Reuters. This all might be true. Johann Smith, the former commander of South African special forces, who alerted the United States and Britain to the plot, has said publicly that he had expected the two countries to warn the government of Equatorial Guinea. They did not, which suggests the Foreign Office and State Department might not have frowned on a regime change, no matter how cockamamie the attempt.

Mann appears to have become bitter in regards to his former conspirators, telling British television, “If someone wants to do me a favor, what they could do is put a pair of handcuffs on Calil, chuck him on a plane, and bring him to Malabo.” He’s also now asserting that Thatcher was directly involved in planning the coup, despite Thatcher’s continued insistence otherwise. Mann could simply be pulling the wool over Obiang’s eyes-probably not hard to do with the ruler of a country where witch burnings are still commonplace. But true or not, what Mann’s telling Obiang could upset the delicate balance of Western interests in the nation, further driving it into the warm embrace of a China all too eager to ferret out access to every natural resource it can get its hands on.

As the full details of the coup continue to emerge, aspiring writers should pay close attention. There are no doubt a few good novels to be wrung out of the ongoing intrigue surrounding Simon Mann and His Adventures in the Worst Place on Earth. As Frederick Forsyth has already proved, you just can’t make this stuff up.

Mark Hemingway is staff reporter at National Review Online.