Johannesburg/Harare - Alleged British mercenary Simon Mann
was secretly extradited in the early hours of Thursday from Zimbabwe
to Equatorial Guinea where he faces charges of attempting to
overthrow the government, his lawyers said in Harare Friday.
He was flown to the West African country in a Zimbabwe Air Force
airplane after have been collected from Zimbabwe's Chikurubi prison
after midnight on Wednesday just hours after he lost a High Court
appeal to prevent his extradition.
Prosecutors in Equatorial Guinea suspect the old Etonian and
former British Special Air Services officer of leading a plot in 2004
to overthrow the government of Teodoro Obian Nguema that failed when
authorities in Zimbabwe intervened.
'He was abducted,' Mann's lawyer Jonathan Samkange said Friday.
'It was arranged before the court sat on Wednesday.'
The lawyer went to Chikurubi prison on Thursday midday to brief
Mann about plans for an appeal to the Supreme Court after Wednesday's
High Court decision.
But Samkange was told the 55-year-old former business associate of
Mark Thatcher, controversial son of former British prime minister
Margaret Thatcher, was no longer there.
Samkange immediately launched a habeas corpus application for the
Zimbabwe government to produce Mann, but only learnt Friday morning
from a series of affidavits from police and the attorney general's
office that Mann was by then in the Guinean capital Malabo.
'An affidavit from a police superintendent of the notorious Law
and Order Section said they arrived at Chikurubi to collect Mann at
1:20 am on Thursday. He first refused to accompany the officers. So
they lied to him,' said Samkange.
'They told him that where they were going, he could telephone me.'
'He was taken to Manyame Air Base just south of Harare and the
aircraft left with him for Malabo at 6:20 am. I applied for him to be
produced, but they said he had already gone to Equatorial Guinea.
'All day yesterday (Thursday) I was looking for him and they said
nothing. I was not advised. They didn't inform the British embassy.
He was not allowed to communicate with his lawyer.'
Attorney General Bharat Patel, who was also one of two judges who
ruled against Mann's appeal on Wednesday, had reportedly hours later
notified police that Mann could be deported.
Mann's lawyers, who had immediately began to arrange his Supreme
Court appeal, said his extradition comes ahead of the finalization of
his case and is therefore illegal.
Patel was aware Mann was appealing to the supreme court and had
given lawyers an undertaking that Mann would be given seven days
notice before he was extradited, Samkange said.
'It was obviously politically guided. I can only conclude that
someone was pulling strings here,' he said.
Mann had also asked for the High Court ruling to be stayed because
Patel, acting essentially both as judge and prosecutor, could not be
expected to deliver a fair decision. 'This is exactly why we wanted
the ruling held over,' said Samkange.
'His (Mann's) rights have been severely abused. I am furious, but
I am also ashamed that our government should resort to tactics like
this.
Nguema wants Mann to face trial and accuses him of planning to fly
in a force of 70 special forces veterans in a hired Antonov aircraft
and seize power in a military strike.
However, the plot fell apart in Harare when Mann and the other 70
men were arrested at the airport where they had stopped to load a
consignment of firearms. In September 2004 they were sentenced to a
variety of prison terms for weapons, aviation and immigration
offences.
Mann was jailed in Zimbabwe for four years.
On the day he completed his sentence and was about to be released,
he was brought before a magistrate for extradition to Equatorial
Guinea, which has been under the one-party dictatorship of Nguema,
who came to power in a coup against his uncle in 1979, and had his
uncle executed.
Samkange was back in the High Court on Friday with an urgent
application for authorities to produce him Mann back in Zimbabwe.
This was illegal. The government of Equatorial Guinea has no right,
no jurisdiction over him.
'I will not stop,' he said. 'I will go on to the African Human
Rights Court and to the International Court of Justice.'
USA
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