Mann Deserves No Mercy

Mann Deserves No Mercy

The Herald (Harare)


OPINION
12 February 2008
Posted to the web 12 February 2008

By Reason Wafawarova
Sydney
According to the BBC, the Zimbabwean lawyer representing British mercenary Simon Mann reportedly vowed to fight to bring the extradited dog of war back to Zimbabwe, on presumed legal loopholes.

Mann's case is just one of many cases at international law - cases that have produced a dilemma created by the extradition doctrine, the extra territorial jurisdiction doctrine and the doctrine of fair trial.
Here is one crime committed in 2004 by about 90 people, comprising the 68 mercenaries arrested at Harare International Airport by Zimbabwean security officials, the 20 advance party of mercenaries picked up in Equatorial Guinea and one Mark, son of former British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher who was arrested in South Africa.

Their mission was to attempt to topple the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea.

Mann and 67 fellow canines of war were charged under immigration, aviation and firearms laws in Zimbabwe and the hired hands were sentenced to between 12 and 18 months each while Mann got seven years for masterminding the misadventure.

The 20 members of the advance party were all charged with attempting to topple a democratically elected government in Equatorial Guinea and got lengthy jail terms ranging between 17 and 34 years apiece.

Mark Thatcher was convicted in South Africa and slapped with a wholly suspended four-year jail term and fined 3 million rand for financing the coup attempt. He paid the fine and immediately left South Africa for the US to escape the possibility of an extradition application from Equatorial Guinea.

Of course, the US only accepts Anglo-Saxon terrorists fleeing to their territory and no one else. The issue here is that for taking part in one and the same crime, some members of this unscrupulous gang got as little as one-year jail terms while others got up to 34 years just because of where they were caught at the time the crime was being committed.

Zimbabwe wanted to try these mercenaries under terrorism laws or something close to what these criminals were up to but there were no such provisions in Zimbabwean law and the mercenaries had to face lesser charges of violating immigration, aviation and firearms laws -- a development that led to much lower sentences.

South Africa had to resort to laws governing the supplying of military equipment because like Zimbabwe, they had no laws to try Thatcher on the grounds of the actual crime he had committed against the people of Guinea. This is why they say the law is an ass.

As Mann came to the end of his prison term, authorities in Equatorial Guinea duly applied for his extradition from Zimbabwe, and Zimbabwe granted the application.

Mann's lawyer unsuccessfully put forward an argument to the effect that his client was not guaranteed a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea and when this argument was thrown out by the Zimbabwean High Court; Mann was promptly extradited to the requesting Equatorial Guinea.

While Mann's lawyer is evidently unamused with the extradition, the BBC was clearly more worried about alleged appalling conditions at Black Beach Maximum Prison in Equatorial Guinea than they are worried about the merits of the allegations levelled against their countryman.

This writer will assert that Mann is a suitable candidate for remand imprisonment at Black Beach Prison or any such other notorious detention centre, Guantanamo Bay included, for the reasons cited in subsequent paragraphs.

Here is the bigger picture of events that led to Mann's fateful encounter with Zimbabwean security details.

Gerald James, a former British paratrooper and accountant wrote a book titled "In The Public Interest" in 1995.

James was a friend of George Kennedy Young of the M16 and a member of the Monday Club, the Tory think tank that brought Margaret Thatcher to power.

James became the Chairman of Astra Fireworks after Mrs Thatcher's ascendance to 10 Downing Street and he turned the firm into an arms manufacturer -- a plan that chimed perfectly with the militarisation of the British economy under Thatcher.

In fact the illicit arms trade by the Thatcher regime was the "magic" at the centre of Thatcher's so-called economic miracle.

According to James, the British government through Astra, made big business through deals dubbed the "Big Five" -- a reference to arms deals involving Oman in 1981, Jordan between 1985 and 1987, Saudi Arabia from 1986, Malaysia in 1988 and 1991 and Indonesia from 1990.

Most of these arms ended up in the hands of combatants fighting in the Iran-Iraq war between 1980 and 1987 and were mainly paid for through the uninterrupted flow of cheap oil, the guarantee always put forward in case of failure to pay.

The shady deals got so nasty that James had to suffer a boardroom coup, as he now knew too much.

His executive officer, Chris Gumbey resigned and met the Iraqi supergun designer, one Gerald Bull, in Brussels.

His intention was to gather evidence on the shady arms deals and to use such evidence to expose the M16. Bull was assassinated an hour after meeting Gumbey.

This was the time Mark Thatcher joined the arms industry as an associate of the so-called "Savoy Mafia" -- a group of illicit arms dealers.

As Lenin said, "Imperialism strives for domination, not democracy."

The Thatcher regime engaged in illicit arms deals meant to dominate weaker states through the weakening effect of international conflict.

About 20 years after being brought into the arms industry by his mother, Mark Thatcher was arrested on August 25 2004, in South Africa.

He was picked up from his 2 million-rand luxury villa in Cape Town's wine growing suburb of Constantina, a suburb widely regarded as home to the rich and the infamous. Margaret Thatcher, now Baroness Thatcher wired 2 million rand to bail out her son some nine days after his arrest.

The scandal revealed in detail the shadowy dealings of big imperial business and also exposed the real intentions and inner dealings of imperialist "democracy".

The scandal brought out the real causes of civil wars and international conflicts as opposed to the oft-stated ones -- more so the conflicts that constantly engulf and blight Africa.

The Scorpions of South Africa had to snatch Mark Thatcher from the haven of unscrupulous denizens who reside in Constantina, as it emerged that Thatcher had played financier to a plot to overthrow the Equatorial Guinea President, Mr Nguema Mbasogo.

As already stated the attempted coup fell flat on its face with the mercenaries arrests in Zimbabwe and in Equatorial Guinea, and Mark Thatcher's conviction in SA.

The coup flopped despite the extensive and despicable experience of its military leader, Mann.

This is the man who formerly ran a notorious mercenary band under the sanitised cover name of "Executive Outcomes" from apartheid South Africa.

After independence in 1994, the new ANC government's anti-mercenary laws did not deter Mann, as he simply changed the name of his company to Logo Logistics while continuing his illicit business of accumulating blood money.

The former SAS officer was, and probably is still a close friend of Mark Thatcher and they were neighbours in Constantina, Cape Town -- a haven of infamous criminals.

Mann is a proven parasitic mercenary -- the living embodiment of imperialist plunderers, who, motivated solely by greed for money, inconsiderately and gleefully plan and execute their murderous deeds on the innocent masses in weaker nations.

These mercenaries entrench and extend, without remorse, the robbery and plunder of Africa's mineral wealth -- a robbery executed on the poor masses of Africa, millions of whom are permanently on the brink of starvation.

Babies die in millions in their mothers' arms alongside hundreds of thousands of other innocent people -- all precisely because of the poverty socially and politically engineered by monopolistic capitalist gangsters who execute their ruthlessness through willing agents like Mann. Doubtless, their wealth is the fruit coming out of Africa's suffering and poverty and their joy is built on the misery and suffering of Africans.

This is why Mann is a suitable candidate for Black Beach.

In fact, Mann deserves to live at Black Beach for the rest of his life so that the world can be spared the agony of putting up with his cold-heartedness.

Here is the imperialist history, which led Mann to try to overthrow the government of E. Guinea.

After independence from Spain in 1963, E. Guinea -- under the leadership of Francisco Macias Nguema -- adopted a loose alliance with the Soviet Union.

The idea was to ward off imperialist machinations and the neo-colonialism that was bedevilling the African continent.

The British and the Americans organised a coup against Francisco Nguema in 1979 and after deposing him they installed his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

The new arrangement allowed the US, France and Spain to dominate the Equatorial Guinea economy, especially control of the extraction of oil, iron ore and lumber.

Teodoro Nguema became a Western ally -- taking up the ruinous IMF-enforced Economic Structural Adjustment Programmes in return for insignificant loans and also shielding the European companies being criticised by environmentalists for dumping toxic waste on E. Guinea's islands.

After the fall of the Soviet Union the imperialist gang had to break up their "united front" as the US-EU economic rivalry started cropping up. The US backed Teodoro Nguema while Spain, on behalf of the EU, backed opposition leader Severo Moto.

The discovery of oil in E. Guinea in the early 1990s did not make the situation any better for the country of about 600 000.

The oil discovery pegged Equatorial Guinea as the third largest oil producer in Africa after Nigeria and Angola and that alone made the country the focus of financial brigandage.

This is the focus that, in December 2003, led to an ad hoc coup consortium being cobbled over a lavish barbecue at Mark Thatcher's Constantina residence in Cape Town and of course mummy was guest of honour. Margaret Thatcher was at the function, priding and ingratiating herself with her son's elite mates as the ruthless gangsters schemed against the people of E. Guinea in general and against Nguema in particular.

According to records at Mann's Logo Logistics, the conspirators at Mark Thatcher's barbecue included Lord Jeffrey H. Archer, perhaps the worst liar to assume British public life -- the competition including the notorious Tony Blair of the 45 minutes infamy.

The group also included Gianfranco Cicogna, the South African Telecoms tycoon and many other longstanding friends of Mark Thatcher including Eli Calil, a Nigerian-born Lebanese businessman who was the co-financier of the coup plot, according to the British Evening Standard of August 26, 2004.

The plan involved the pledging of US$134 000 by Mark Thatcher for the overthrow of Nguema Mbasogo for Severo Moto in return for oil contracts.

Mann hatched a plan to storm the Presidential Palace in Malabo with dozens of mercenary hands and to either murder or capture Nguema in his sleep.

As it turned out, it was Thatcher who got a rude awakening as the Scorpions raided his luxurious villa.

It was also Mann who got a rude awakening at Harare International Airport when he was whisked to Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison.

Nick Du Toit also got a rude awakening with a 34-year jail term in E. Guinea for his role in leading the advance party that was raided at a Malabo hotel.

It is revealing that while Mann, Du Toit and the key investors stood to receive substantial percentages of E. Guinea's oil revenue all the hired 83 mercenary hands had only been promised US$ 3 500 each for the bloody assignment that saw them languishing in Zimbabwean and E. Guinea jails.

The fate that befell Mann symbolises what will ultimately happen to the scourge of imperialism.

As long as capital continues to push the imperialist ruling elite to create investment opportunities and markets, the push is forever heading towards dangerous waters and like the drowning Mann, one day imperialism is going to sink.

As Mao Tse Tung said, "Imperialists are paper tigers, they pick up heavy rocks only to drop them on their own feet."

It is time for all revolutionary people in smaller countries to bring together all the streams, rivulets and rivers of mass resistance -- all into a mighty torrent capable of washing away this ruinous, decadent, senile and parasitic imperial system.

The thwarting of the likes of Mann and Thatcher is the beginning of the fall of the dragon.

Africa is not going to stand by and watch as devils plan to plunder its resources with the brutality and barbarism characteristic of the mercenary trade.