Simon Mann, the leader of the failed Equatorial Guinea coup attempt that led to the arrest of Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, faces up to 10 years in jail after being found guilty of attempting to possess dangerous weapons by a court in Zimbabwe.
Mann, a UK Special Air Service veteran who was arrested at Harare airport in March along with a plane full of mercenaries while waiting for a weapons delivery, will be sentenced next month.
A magistrate at a makeshift courthouse in a Harare maximum-security prison found 66 of the mercenaries, all travelling on South African passports, not guilty of the weapons offenses.
Most of the men held in Zimbabwe had already pleaded guilty last month to lesser charges of violating Zimbabwe's immigration and civil aviation laws, carrying a maximum penalty of two years in jail and a fine.
Prosecutors said Equatorial Guinea's Spanish-based opposition leader offered the group $1.8 million and oil rights to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Mann admitted trying to order assault rifles, grenades, anti-tank rocket launchers and other weapons from Zimbabwe Defence Industries, but magistrate Mishrod Guvamombe said prosecutors failed to prove their case against the 64 other men arrested when their ageing Boeing 727 landed at Harare International Airport on March 7, and two already in Zimbabwe with Mann at the time.
He also acquitted Mann of an additional charge of taking possession of the weapons. The men, including Mann, maintain they were en route to jobs protecting a mining operation in eastern Congo.
Fifteen other suspected mercenaries, including South African businessman Nick du Toit, who has admitted to supporting the coup attempt, remained under house arrest at his Cape Town home.
Mark Thatcher was charged with helping to fund the coup attempt after a dawn raid by the Scorpions, an elite police squad which has been investigating links between Mann and several high-profile businessmen.
The South African government said yesterday it was considering a request from Equatorial Guinea for investigators to be allowed to travel to Cape Town to interview Mark Thatcher over the coup attempt. However there has been no request for extradition, something that is thought highly unlikely because the countries have no extradition treaty.
Mann, is a scion of the Watney's brewing empire and went to Eton and Sandhurst before becoming an officer in the Special Air Service. Part thrill-seeker, part businessman, he left the army in the early 1980s, moving into the security and mercenary business. He set up Executive Outcomes, making a fortune protecting oil installations from rebels in Angola's civil war.
In 1995 he became involved in an offshoot, Sandline International, with ex-Scots Guard Tim Spicer, and shipped arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of a UN embargo.
Mann has been in solitary confinement since his arrest in March. His lawyers claim he has been tortured and assaulted by prison officers, and has suffered lice, inedible food and general deprivation.
"Our situation is not good and it is very URGENT," Mann wrote to his wife and lawyers in a letter smuggled out of the jail but intercepted by South African intelligence. "It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga! Of course investors did not think this would happen." The letter then went on to refer to "Scratcher" -- a nickname given to Mark Thatcher at Harrow because he had acne.
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