The details of two meetings between former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher and British mercenary Simon Mann before his failed attempt to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea were removed from the former Special Air Service (SAS) officer’s newly published memoirs for legal reasons.
Mann’s involvement in an ill-fated attempt to topple Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in 2004 is chronicled in his book Cry Havoc, along with the claim that he dined and even holidayed with the former British prime minister.
However, it is understood that extracts detailing discussions between Thatcher and Mann, in the year before the failed coup, were taken out of the book on the advice of its publisher.
One of the meetings described in a first draft of the book was allegedly held in the first-floor sitting room of Thatcher’s home in Chester Square, London, in autumn 2003.
The second meeting was said to have taken place around that Christmas by the swimming pool of a ￡2 million (US$3.2 million) mansion in Cape Town owned by her son, Sir Mark Thatcher, who was later fined ￡265,000 and given a four-year suspended jail term by a South African court for financing a helicopter for use in the plot.
Known as the Wonga coup, the attempt to replace Obiang with exiled opposition politician Severo Moto in March 2004 went dramatically wrong, leading to Mann’s imprisonment.
Mann was arrested at Harare International Airport in Zimbabwe as he and 69 other mercenaries were loading a plane with ￡150,000 of weapons, intending to fly to Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea.
After three years in a Zimbabwean jail, he was extradited to Equatorial Guinea in the “oil for Mann” deal, a reference to the large amounts of oil that the Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe managed to secure from Equatorial Guinea.
Mann, who had been due to receive ￡15 million if the coup succeeded, was convicted in July 2008 of attempting to kill Obiang, overthrow his government and disturb the peace and independence of the state, and was jailed for 34 years. In November 2009, after months of talks, he was pardoned by the president on humanitarian grounds and freed.
In Mann’s book, published on Thursday, he details Mark Thatcher’s alleged role in the failed plot, describing him as one of the “high-profile secret backers.”
Mann reveals that he first met the former prime minister’s son in 1997, when he moved to Cape Town, and describes subsequently eating Christmas dinner with the whole family, including Baroness Thatcher and her husband, Sir Denis.
“I mean, I mean we move to SA in late November and four weeks later we’re all round at his place for Christmas dinner, meeting mum and dad!” Mann writes.
Of his subsequent relationship with the former Conservative leader, Mann adds: “As I know, Maggie shares her son’s fondness for the SAS. They had made the difference for her. Gone the extra. More than once. She had for them too.”
“She takes a shine to me. Over the years whenever we have dinner, I’m always sat next to her. Maggie’s Cape Town favourite. Other than that of [former South African president] Nelson Mandela, our house is the only Cape home she visits, for lunch or dinner. Amanda [Mann’s wife] and I even go on a game lodge holiday with Margaret, Denis, Mark and his wife Diane,” he writes.
However, details of discussions between Mann and Margaret Thatcher were taken out of the book even before lawyers for Mark Thatcher were sent a copy.
“The first draft had this information in it. The draft that was sent to the Thatcher lawyers did not, and the changes made to the book were accordingly not large. It was deemed the best course of action to leave the content of the discussions out of the book,” a source close to the publisher said.
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