grioo.com

[Nomade]

Etant donne qu'il a deja admit sa culpabilite. Je peux dire que je souhaite fermement que la Guinee Equatorialle emette un mandat d'arret internationale et poursuive les commanditaire du coup tel que les Britanniques Ely Calil et Mark Tchatcher.

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Guinée équatoriale: le procès Mann du 17 au 19 juin

MALABO - Le procès du Britannique Simon Mann, extradé du Zimbabwe vers la Guinée équatoriale où il est accusé d'être le cerveau d'un coup d'Etat déjoué en 2004, aura lieu du 17 au 19 juin, a affirmé à l'AFP vendredi le procureur général de l'Etat équato-guinéen José Olo Obono.

"Tout est déjà en place et le procès de Simon Mann devra en principe durer trois jours, les mardi 17, mercredi 18 et jeudi 19 juin. Il sera défendu par son avocat local", a indiqué M. Olo Obono.

Le procureur a rappelé que les avocats étrangers "ne peuvent pas plaider en Guinée équatoriale. Ils peuvent bien être là, mais à aucun moment, ils ne pourront prendre directement sa défense durant le procès",

Mann, formé à Eton puis à l'académie militaire de Sandhurst, ancien officier des SAS (forces spéciales britanniques), avait été arrêté en mars 2004 avec 61 autres mercenaires présumés, lorsque leur avion s'était posé sur l'aéroport international de Harare.

Les autorités les ont accusés d'être venus prendre livraison d'armes avant de rejoindre à Malabo une équipe dirigée par le Sud-Africain Nick du Toit, condamné depuis à 34 ans de prison en Guinée équatoriale, pour y fomenter un coup d'Etat.

Dans une interview à la chaîne britannique Channel 4 News, conduite depuis sa cellule d'une prison de Malabo en mars, Simon Mann avait avoué: "J'ai été impliqué et j'étais le manager... Pas l'architecte et pas le principal homme".

Il a montré du doigt l'Espagne, ancienne puissance coloniale, et l'Afrique du Sud qui ont déjà par le passé réfuté des accusations d'implication dans ce dossier. Il a aussi accusé un homme d'affaires libanais né au Nigeria, Ely Calil, qui, dans dans un communiqué, a nié "toute implication et toute responsabilité" dans cette affaire.

M. Mann a reconnu que l'argent avait motivé ses actes mais affirmé que sa volonté "première" avait été "d'aider la population de Guinée équatoriale qui était en pleine crise".

Malabo a aussi lancé un mandat d'arrêt international contre Mark Thatcher, fils de l'ex-Premier ministre britannique Margaret Thatcher, accusé d'être un des instigateurs du coup d'Etat.

Le président Teodoro Obiang Nguema dirige le pays d'une main de fer depuis qu'il a renversé en 1979 son oncle Francisco Macias Nguema.

Souvent critiquée pour des violations des droits de l'Homme, la Guinée équatoriale, pays très fermé, est devenue ces dernières années le troisième producteur de pétrole d'Afrique subsaharienne.

Mais, malgré un Produit intérieur brut (PIB) de 7.874 dollars par habitant, ce qui en fait le 73e pays le plus riche au monde, la Guinée équatoriale dégringole à la 127e place, sur 177 Etats, dans le classement de l'Indicateur du développement humain (IDH). Un écart de 54 places, une des pires performances de la planète.

(©AFP / 13 juin 2008 13h24)

[Nomade]

Pour ceux que le proces interesse et qui peuvent comprendre l'anglais. Voici un lien vers un site britannique qui montre des extraits du proces de Simon Mann. Le lien vers le video se retrouve a la fin de l'article avec l'hyperlien nomme: "Simon Mann video player". Il est inutile de lire l'article qui n'est pas relie a l'affaire.

Video du Proces de Simon Mann

Je vais aussi poster un autre article, que je vais essayer de traduire en petite partie plus tard avec d'autre commentaires. C'est un autre interview que Simon Mann avait fait au sujet de cette affaire en mars dernier. J'avais deja poster un lien vers un autre interview dans le thread de Severo Moto. Noter que meme si des gens comme Mark Tchatcher, Ely Calil ont ete les principales organisateurs du crime, qui leur auraient permis de controler la production de petrole dans ce pays; Il ont toujours besoin de visage Africains comme Severo Moto pour monter leur coup et sauver les apparences.

L'article est interessant car il en dit un peu plus sur l'affaire. Surtout sur ce qui se passe derriere la scene lorsqu'il relate ses rencontres Ely Cali, un riche membre de l'elite britannique. Ce meme Ely Calil (Elie Khalil) impliquer dans l'Affaire Elf (maintenant Total) et partenaire du groupe francafricain Bolloré. Imaginer...

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IN AN EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEW, DOG OF WAR SIMON MANN REVEALS HOW:

• He did not know about his wife's attempts to gag him

• Had no idea of his lawyer's connections with 'Mr Big' Eli Calil

• And that 'Naughty boy' Thatcher wanted to run Equatorial Guinea like his mother ran Docklands

simon mann

Shackled: Simon Mann is being held in a prison in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea
The mercenary awaiting trial for plotting a coup d'etat in Equatorial Guinea has revealed that he has never met or even spoken to his British lawyer, the man who tried to stop him discussing the affair.

Simon Mann, 55, was astonished to learn that his solicitor, Andy Kerman, is a friend of Eli Calil, the businessman he calls the "Mr Big" behind the plan to overthrow the country's government - and, claims Mann, someone who has every reason to ensure he remains silent.

When told about the connection by The Mail on Sunday, the former SAS officer agreed there was a potential conflict of interest.

"That is a surprise," he said. "I didn't know that. It worries me, obviously. But I hope lawyers are meant to be able to deal with these things."

Last night Andy Kerman said: "My relationship with Eli Calil was made clear to the Mann family from the start.

"I would not have accepted instruction to act for Simon if I felt my ability properly to represent his best interests was in any way compromised by this."

Channel 4 broadcast an interview with Mann last week after overturning an 11th hour injunction obtained by his lawyers.

Mr Kerman, who last year admitted his friendship with Calil, said he was acting under "general instruction" and in consultation with Mann's wife Amanda.

The gagging order was lifted when Mann wrote a letter from his prison cell insisting he wanted his words to be broadcast.

"I did wonder about the injunction and I ran through what I said [in the interview] but I couldn't think of anything that I'd said that I didn't want to come out," he said.

"In the letter I said that I had given the interview of my own free will and asked my family to ensure that it went out."

He added: "I don't know Kerman, I've never met him but he is my lawyer and Amanda's lawyer, she appointed him after my arrest. But I will do what I bloody well like and ask him to pick up the pieces."

In an interview with the Mail On Sunday, which goes way beyond his TV confession last week, Mann talks for the first time in depth about the botched plan to oust the president of the oil-rich West African state in 2004.

He places Sir Mark Thatcher, whom he describes as "a very naughty boy", at the heart of the plot, claiming he was obsessed with how best to exploit commercial interests in Equatorial Guinea after the takeover.

And he outlines the alleged role of Calil, the Lebanese oil tycoon with a £100million personal fortune who counts British politicians, including Peter Mandelson, among his circle of influential friends.

Calil and Sir Mark Thatcher, said Mann, "have let me down very badly. It is these two - not the investors - who I feel most bitter about because of their intimate involvement in all this".

After his arrest in Zimbabwe Mann famously smuggled a letter to his wife from his Harare prison cell demanding "a large splodge of wonga" from "Smelly", "Scratcher" and others to get him out.

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simon mann

Upbeat: Mann meets The Mail on Sunday's Ian Gallagher

"Smelly is Eli Calil," confirmed Mann. "It is the name my wife gave him. She is very good at assigning names to people. And yes, Thatcher was known as Scratcher."

But the "wonga" was not forthcoming and Mann's fury is still raw four years on.

"When you are on an expedition and get stuck half way up a mountain you don't expect the others on the expedition to take down their tents, roll up their sleeping bags and go back to London," said Mann.

"That has made me fantastically angry. Those two should be here in shackles as well."

Mann claimed Sir Mark held a series of meetings at his home in Cape Town around Christmas 2003 at which money-making schemes involving Equatorial Guinea's development after the coup were "endlessly" discussed.

Thatcher cited the example of the Government quango set up in the early Eighties by his mother, then Prime Minister, to regenerate London's docklands.

"Mark said the London Docklands Development Corporation had been such a success because Lady Thatcher made sure there was no red tape and that the commission could do what it wanted," said Mann.

Laughing, he added: "He wanted the same to happen in Equatorial Guinea.

Eli Calil

Millionaire Eli Calil denied involvement in the coup

"I think the whole thing also appealed to Mark on an adventure level. But he isn't the sort who will roll his sleeves up and get stuck in. He's just a very naughty boy."

Mann spoke to The Mail on Sunday on Thursday at the infamous Black Beach prison in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, where he languishes in solitary confinement, locked up for 24 hours a day, handcuffed and shackled.

He was secretly extradited from Zimbabwe last month - or in his words "violently and illegally kidnapped" - and will go on trial in the next few weeks accused of terrorist conspiracy and charges of attempting to murder President Teodoro Obiang.

The country's attorney general has said he will not face the death penalty but Mann, an Old Etonian and scion of the Watney brewing empire, could face a life sentence.

"I really don't know what will happen," he told us, shrugging.

The interview was conducted in the air-conditioned courtroom, part of the prison complex and where Mann will be tried.

We first saw him out of the window, inching across the prison yard in his leg irons, a rare occasion when he was thankful for his shackles: Every step meant longer in the fresh air and sunshine.

Then he appeared in the doorway and shuffled, all smiles, into the room. He was led to a chair in front of the dock and directly behind him, the face of President Obiang - who has been accused, without foundation, of cannibalism - glowered at him from a framed photograph hanging on the wall.

In build, Mann seemed slightly frail, and much older, although he insisted he has been well treated.

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The slums of Malabo on the island of Bioko, the capital city of Equitorial Guinea

It was hard to reconcile his appearance, almost donnish but for his shackles and grey prison uniform, with his exploits in Sierra Leone and Angola as a soldier of fortune which made headlines worldwide.

This was the man, after all, who intended to land here in swashbuckling style, leading 80 mercenaries on a plane loaded with guns and ammunition, had he not been arrested in Harare on March 7, 2004, when the plot unravelled spectacularly.

Throughout our interview he remained upbeat, relishing the opportunity to talk and joke, despite the gravity of his plight.

Even being denied access to the exercise yard was a source of mirth. "It's OK," he said, and getting up to move across the room, laughed: "I just walk up and down my cell like this. No problem."

Perhaps there was more than just a touch of stiff-upper-lip bravado about all this. This is a man whose father and grandfather captained England at cricket, after all.

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Simon Mann

Donnish figure: Mann has aged considerably since being jailed

And the gloss he applies liberally to everything about Equatorial Guinea - "even the prison food in here is OK" (there is chicken, eggs and rice) - has much to do with an ever-present fear of upsetting the hosts in whose hands his future lies.

It seemed he felt more comfortable talking about the coup plot rather than, say, his family or how he manages to stop himself going insane.

"Ah, that's the secret," he says when asked, perhaps referring to his special-forces training.

"I've got seven children in England and I miss them desperately."

He hasn't seen them in four years. In fact, he has a daughter born after his arrest who he has never seen.

His wife has not visited, neither in Equatorial Guinea nor during his incarceration in Zimbabwe.

"I don't want her to, and have told her that. I don't want her to see me this way."

Before delivering his extraordinary story - and advancing the defence his lawyers will lay before the court - he pushed his spectacles to the top of his nose with his handcuffs and announced briskly: "I do want to talk to you about this, absolutely. I think things have gone beyond the stage of telling tales out of school."

What he calls the "EG project" began after he met Calil at his £12million home off Kings Road in

Chelsea in April 2003, having been introduced by Gary Hersham, a London-based property developer and friend of his wife.

"Calil didn't come straight out with the plan, that came later, but he knew a lot about me, about what I'd done in Angola and Sierra Leone.

"We talked about the Sudan, which I had visited a couple of months before. We talked about the civil war there, who was likely to win, whether there were any opportunities there.

"I had this distinct feeling that I was being set up - I didn't mind because this was a wealthy and important guy and I suspected a business proposition was coming.

"He completely seduced me. He is very charming and very, very clever and, me with my one A-level, well, I have always been overly respectful of people who are very clever.

"On the third meeting, also at his home, Calil casually said, 'The place that I would like to rule for a day is Equatorial Guinea.'

"I asked why, not knowing anything about the place and he started to talk about it and then he said, 'I want you to come to Madrid with me to meet Severo Moto,' the leader of the opposition in exile. I agreed.

"Moto came across as very sincere and told me a terrible tale about Equatorial Guinea. Both of them painted a picture of really ghastly fear and loathing.

"Calil also spoke of the imminent collapse of the regime, and said that there will be a coup by the army at any moment anyway.

"They wanted to bring Moto in and I was going to lead the presidential bodyguard."

Mann claims that according to Calil, Moto's supporters in Equatorial Guinea would secure the city and arrest the president.

"We expected to land and shake hands, not fight. How did anyone ever imagine that 80 men and me were just going to rock up here at an international airport with brand new weapons and equipment that hadn't been tested and miraculously organise a takeover of a country?

"For however brave people think I am, I am not that brave - or stupid. We were simply going to be Moto's bodyguard."

He said he learned in the SAS that "you need 80 people for a VVIP bodyguard - 40 on duty and 40 off duty.

"That's why there were 80 of us," he said.

Mann also claimed Calil told him the Spanish government thoroughly approved of the plan "to the extent that they were promising Calil that a force of Guardia Civil would come here following a coup.

"But the question of recognition is more important because if you are a student of assisted regime changes you will know that it is no good changing a regime without recognition. You can really be left high and dry.

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Shackles: But Mann says Mark Thatcher and 'Mr Big' Eli Calil should also be locked up

"So to me, when Calil said that he had a guarantee of immediate Spanish recognition, as the ex-colonial power and a good friend of the United States, that made the whole enterprise feel good."

He concedes he does not have any independent proof, however, of these claims about Spain, which have been dismissed by the country's government.

Mann denied that the coup had been given the tacit approval of the British Government, which was forced to retract claims that it had received no advance warning.

Adam Roberts, the former Africa correspondent of The Economist and author of The Wonga Coup, a book about the affair, has said: "Western governments - including Spain, Britain and the United States - knew that mercenaries were cooking up a plan to carry out a coup in Equatorial Guinea.

"Britain and America would have gone along with regime change quite happily as long as oil supplies were assured."

So what was Mann's motive? It is at this point that his story becomes even more neatly tailored into a defence against the charges he will face.

"I was being asked to help people in trouble and that was my primary motivation.

"The second thing was that Calil and Moto had sought me out and I was very flattered. Thirdly, I felt this was a real challenge of an altruistic nature."

There was of course another reason: Hard cash - lots of it - and a chance perhaps to share in the black gold that had presumably attracted Calil, if Mann's claims are to be believed, to Equatorial Guinea in the first place.

Mann was keen to play this down, however.

"I have been in these situations, kind of, before and I know if you do a good enough job and keep your fingers crossed and nose clean and back straight and all the rest of it, you will get rewarded."

Mann, in fact, had made certain he would be rewarded: He had signed two agreements with Moto and the Provisional Government of Equatorial Guinea which, if the coup had been successful, would have earned him millions - a fact he doesn't deny.

The contracts were found on him when he was arrested, though he says he cannot remember the precise figures involved.

According to Mann, it was decided that Calil would either fund the coup himself - he estimated around US$10million was needed - or find investors.

The tycoon did produce some of the money, says Mann, but kept making excuses about being unable to find the rest, "something that bothered me all along".

"I told Calil that one thing you must not do with something like this is mess around because everything leaks. The only way to be successful is to be quick.

"I said, 'When you say to me, here is the green light, it must be the green light, not stop-start, stop-start,' and that is what happened. Not to put too fine a point on it, he let us all down.

"He kept saying his treasure chest was tied up by the French courts" - a reference to Calil's arrest by French police in 2002 over allegations of illegal payments to another African leader, although he was later released on appeal.

"But that excuse didn't make sense, because I knew he had money elsewhere. I decided to start putting my own money in, about US$700,000 by the end of it.

"By about October 2003 I had quite a number of people on my payroll and I wasn't going to start messing around with their livelihoods."

These were mercenaries, said Mann, who were recruited by his old acquaintance Nick du Toit, a former South African special forces commander now serving 34 years in Black Beach jail for his part in the coup.

"Around this time I said to Calil, 'Listen Eli, we are really making a mess of this and it is dangerous.'

"I started to try to give him some ultimatums but at some point I said, 'Why don't I see if I can get some investors myself?'

"I was thinking about Mark Thatcher, who I had got to know quite well. Also, Mark had some dealings with Equatorial Guinea going back to 2000. He had tried to win a major security contract here.

"I said, 'Listen, Mark, this is the plan' and told him about the coup, basically what Calil and Moto had told me.

"He said he was interested. I told him we needed his money and influence and he then came to London and he met Calil and became one of the team.

"I think his contribution in the end was about US$300,000. I wasn't expecting millions from him, he is a pretty shrewd businessman."

Sir Mark was fined and received a suspended sentence in South Africa for his involvement in the coup after admitting unwittingly funding the purchase of a helicopter for Mann.

He said as far as he knew he was helping finance a new company - an air ambulance business in West Africa.

But Mann told The Mail on Sunday Sir Mark's money was "mostly" spent on chartering a plane to fly Moto, whom Calil allegedly wanted to install as the new president, into Equatorial Guinea on the day of the coup.

"The plane was a Beech King Air with Severo Moto on board that flew from the Canary Islands.

"It was meant to arrive here simultaneously with me. In the event, I was arrested at Harare and the plane was turned around at Bamako in Mali."

Mann said Sir Mark was "very much on the same kind of deal as I was with Calil. What I mean by this is that everyone had to be very sensible but that good things were going to happen.

"Those who helped the new government into power would be first in the queue and the development of Equatorial Guinea was going to be big.

"But that doesn't mean that this was going to be a looting and pillaging exercise."

Mann claims Sir Mark started off by saying he just wanted to be an investor "but by D-Day he was an intimate member of the team. He was excited by the whole thing".

He added: "There were a lot of discussions between Mark and Greg Wales (a London-based businessman friend of Mann) over Christmas in Cape Town in 2003 about how to exploit the commercial situation after the event.

"This was when the thing with the London Docklands Development Corporation came up. The commission, he said, had been a success because Lady Thatcher allowed it to do what it liked. I really thought it a lot of nonsense and stopped going to their meetings."

Mann alleges both Sir Mark and Greg Wales were wary of being outmanoeuvred by Calil following the coup.

"They knew Calil was clever, powerful and pretty byzantine. They were plotting and planning as to how to make sure cards were kept on the table commercially speaking after the event.

"Calil said, 'If we are successful everyone is going to be watching us like a hawk, especially the Americans.'

He said that the clever thing to do would be leave the oil and gas alone.

"He said we would make money slowly and cleverly, not by running around trying to cherry pick the oil and gas concessions.

"He suggested we build the hotels that all the oil and gas executives would have to stay in and develop property.

"Mark and Greg saw the wisdom of what Calil was saying but they were deeply suspicious that Calil would be the one benefiting more than anyone else.

"But then he was the biggest contributor, because, if we spent US$4million, two million - more or less - came from him."

Mann added that he is unsure whether all of Calil's contribution came from his own pocket or if "he had others behind him" - suggesting, perhaps, that there are aspects of the affair, and possibly people behind it, that even Mann does not know about.

Asked if Sir Mark had inquired about what was going to happen to president Obiang, Mann said: "Certainly. I told him that this was an area of disagreement between myself and Calil and Moto.

"They wanted to try the president for alleged criminality and my reaction to that was that it would have to be a fair trial, not a kangaroo court.

"What I really wanted was for the president to be given some money and be able to live with his family.

"Mark agreed with me. I thought there should be a complete amnesty. Severo was pretty adamant that this should not happen, though."

Mann admitted that assassinating the president was another option that was discussed "but I was dead against this. How on Earth would we get international recognition if that were the case? Nothing was resolved though."

Mann's attempt to portray the coup as a bloodless, smooth regime change is at odds with another version of events from Nick Du Toit, who had worked at Executive Outcomes, the mercenary outfit set up by Mann.

In his confession Du Toit said he led a ten-man advance party to Equatorial Guinea and detailed how his troops would take over the air traffic control tower at Malabo's airport and secure a base.

They would then establish communications channels with Mann's incoming aircraft from Harare. Du Toit alleges that the mercenaries were to split into two groups to prevent Obiang's forces from getting into Malabo.

The plan was, he says, to capture a minister who would lead them to where Obiang would be sleeping in the presidential palace.

The mercenaries would then take the president to the airport from where he would be "flown to Spain if not killed in this operation".

Explaining the difference in his account, Mann claimed he was the only person Calil told about the uprising by Moto's supporters, but does not say why.

Mann said it was only when he arrived in Equatorial Guinea that it dawned on him how seriously he had been misled.

"It was an awful moment. Through the back of the police 4x4 I could see it was perfectly obvious that what I'd been told about Equatorial Guinea and the situation was either completely wrong or in four years there had been a miracle.

"I could see immediately that this was not the situation that had been advertised to me. I felt like an idiot. I also thought no wonder Eli always managed to avoid me coming here. If I had, I wouldn't be here now."

It was at this point in our interview that the minister of national security, Manuel Ngueman Mba, who was observing from the back of the courtroom, decided it was time Mann was returned to his cell.

"The minister has much to do today," said an aide. "He is very busy at the moment."

Just how busy became clear later in the day when it emerged that police had apparently foiled another possible coup.

A car shipped from Spain had been intercepted at Malabo port containing hidden guns and ammunition.

It served as a reminder that covetous eyes are still focused on the former Spanish colony, dismissed on the world stage, say its leaders, as an "insignificant" microstate before the discovery of two vast oil fields transformed its fortunes.

It now produces more oil per head of population than Saudi Arabia and has the fourth highest per capita income in the world behind Luxembourg, Bermuda and Jersey.

The manifestations of this new-found wealth abound: gleaming office and apartment blocks, top-of-the range 4x4s which skim along brand new roads, and five-star hotels.

On the surface all seems rosy. But fear and paranoia persist, a reminder that this is, after all, a police state.

The murderous regime of the previous president, Macias Nguema, the current ruler's uncle, is still seared in the minds of many. He killed ten members of his own Cabinet before turning on his people, massacring tens of thousands.

In 1979 he was deposed by his nephew, shot by Obiang's supporters after he tried to flee with the country's entire foreign currency reserves - £100 million --stuffed into suitcases.

That amount must seem small now to president Obiang, who has grown fabulously wealthy through oil. But with it comes a price.

"There are people among us, businessmen, people in government perhaps, who may be planning another coup attempt," said one of his advisers.

Last night, Amanda Mann said: "I have always been aware that Andy Kerman knew Eli Calil socially. This in no way affects our 100 per cent confidence either in Andy's integrity or his ability to represent Simon's best interests."

A spokesman for Sir Mark Thatcher said: "Mark's made his position absolutely clear. He's got nothing further to add."

Calil has issued a statement denying that he played any part in the alleged coup.

Interview avec Simon Mann