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The Guardian
3 days ago
- Business
- The Guardian
Simon Mann obituary
The career of the former soldier and mercenary Simon Mann might have seemed unexceptional in the pages of John Buchan or Rider Haggard but unfortunately for him it ended not in the 19th century but in a jail cell in post-colonial 21st-century Africa. Mann, who has died aged 72 following a heart attack, spent five years in prisons in Zimbabwe and then Equatorial Guinea between 2004 and 2009 for his part in the attempted 'Wonga coup', so called because of his unavailing plea for his friends, including Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of the former prime minister, to stump up funds – 'a splodge of wonga' – to rescue him following a failed attempt to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the president of the west African oil state. It was, he admitted, 'a fuck up'. The nicknames of those friends were in a letter he attempted to smuggle to his wife from a prison in Harare: Thatcher was Scratcher, allegedly because of the adolescent acne he had suffered at school, and there was also Smelly and Nosher, names perhaps more PG Wodehouse than Bulldog Drummond. But they did not save Mann from torture in Zimbabwe or isolation at the notorious Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea. The Sunday Times in 2011 said: 'Everything about [Mann] is preposterous, fruity, bonkers and slightly frightful,' but his friends found him engaging, intelligent, though easily bored, and wry. He had a military career with the Scots Guards and the SAS before seeking adventure and wealth as the organiser of a firm providing mercenaries, mainly from South Africa, to protect oil and mining companies in Angola. Had the coup to overthrow the tyrannical and corrupt president of Equatorial Guinea succeeded, Mann would have received a pay off in the region of £15m. He was a son of privilege, a scion of the London brewery family whose company merged with Watney's. Both his father, George, and grandfather, Frank, had briefly been England and Middlesex cricket captains, in the days when only amateurs were considered suitable for team leadership. Both had served with the Scots Guards and had won the Military Cross, respectively in the first and second world wars. George Mann captained the MCC England party on a tour of South Africa in 1948-49 and met his future wife, Margaret (nee Clark), an heiress, on the boat taking the side back to Britain. Simon, their son, preferred rowing to cricket at Eton, where he was apparently known as 'Maps' because of his fascination with Africa and, according to a friend, the possibility of staging coups there. He proceeded to Sandhurst and a commission in the family regiment. Seeking a livelier challenge, Mann passed the demanding tests for the SAS and became a troop commander specialising in intelligence and counter-terrorism. He served around the world but left the army at the age of 28 in 1981 and started a security business offering protection to wealthy, mainly Arab, clients in Britain, returning to the army briefly to serve during the first Gulf war on the staff of the commander Sir Peter de la Billière. Later, as a sideline, Mann played Col Derek Wilford, the Parachute brigade commander, in Bloody Sunday, the 2002 Paul Greengrass film of the killings by the army at a Derry civil rights demonstration in 1972. In 1996 he teamed up with an oil executive, Tony Buckingham, to found a firm based in South Africa providing security and military support to governments to protect their interests. The company, Executive Outcomes, helped protect the oil wells of the Angolan government, under attack from Unita rebels. Four years later, Mann co-founded Sandline International, another security firm, with a British former officer, Lt Col Tim Spicer, providing military training and arms to the Sierra Leone government trying to keep control of the country's diamond fields. The profits enabled Mann to buy an estate on the Beaulieu River in Hampshire, but also took him back to South Africa, where he began recruiting mercenaries to overthrow the Obiang regime in Equatorial Guinea and replace it with one led by the insurgent leader Severo Moto. By then Mann was in his mid-50s and the whole operation was haphazard and misconceived. It included Mann checking out the price of some supplies at a branch of B&Q. The South African authorities were well aware what was going on – probably as a result of loose talk by the plotters around a hotel swimming pool – and the Zimbabwean government was alerted too, though it continued selling arms and ammunition to Mann and his colleagues. Friends of Mann, including Thatcher, provided funds, though Thatcher himself later claimed he thought he had been buying a helicopter merely for humanitarian work, an excuse which did not prevent him receiving a suspended sentence and a hefty fine for breaking anti-mercenary legislation. All went wrong after Mann and his band of 70 mercenaries touched down in Harare on the night of 7 March 2004 to pick up the arms. They were arrested, as was a further group already in Malabo, the Guinean capital. It was while he was awaiting trial that the notorious letter was written: 'Our situation is not good and it is very URGENT … it may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga. Now it's bad times and everyone has to fucking well pull their full weight. Once we get into a real trial scenario we are fucked.' The letter was intercepted by the prison guards. No money was forthcoming from Scratcher, or Smelly, thought to be a reference to Ely Calil, a Nigerian-Lebanese oil tycoon. 'They let me down badly,' Mann complained later. 'They ought to be in shackles as well.' He said Thatcher had known perfectly well about the coup plan and had been part of the team management. He regretted the coup: 'When you go tiger shooting, you don't expect the tiger to win.' Four months after the band's arrest, Mann was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, later reduced to four, on two counts of buying firearms illegally – the other mercenaries faced short sentences. He had claimed the object of the mission was to protect diamond mines in the Congo. Mann later said he had confessed under duress and had been tortured and subjected to sensory deprivation, 'all the sort of stuff we used to do to each other at (the SAS in) Hereford.' But on his release in Zimbabwe in May 2007 he was immediately extradited to Equatorial Guinea. There he was sentenced to 34 years at Black Beach prison, where, for most prisoners, assaults were rife and food intermittent. There were even rumours that Obiang had a penchant for eating bits of his captives – which the dictator denied. Mann's imprisonment was not so harsh: he had access to books and to journalists; food was supplied from a luxury hotel, and he lunched with the country's security minister. It helped that by then he was admitting his guilt, naming names and expressing contrition. Within 15 months, in November 2009, Obiang freed him 'on humanitarian grounds' to receive medical treatment and see his family in Britain. Back home, Mann was able to meet his five-year-old son, Arthur, for the first time, and to reunite with his wife, Amanda, and six other children. His attempts to restart his career, however, were less successful: 'My former peers couldn't hire me, even in the back office,' he told the Times in 2023. 'It was 'look Simon, don't take it personally, but we spend a lot of time and money telling everyone we are not mercenaries.'' In 2011 he wrote a book on his experiences, Cry Havoc, and latterly was chairing a start-up company attempting to turn plastic waste into hydrogen. One of his friends was said to be Obiang. Mann is survived by Amanda (nee Freedman), who was his third wife and the mother of four of the seven children who also survive him. Simon Mann, army officer and mercenary, born 26 June 1952; died 8 May 2025
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Ex-SAS officer Simon Mann who was father of Prince Harry's 'real best man' and led failed African 'Wonga Coup' has died 'while exercising' aged 72
Simon Mann, the colourful mercenary and ex-SAS officer jailed for leading the so-called Wonga Coup involving Sir Mark Thatcher in central Africa 20 years ago has died, MailOnline can reveal. Old Etonian Mann, who also served in the Scots Guards after Sandhurst, was one of a group of 70 mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe for attempting to stage a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004. Businessman Sir Mark, son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was later arrested in South Africa and, like Mann, admitted a part in the coup attempt. It is believed that multi-millionaire and father-of-seven Mann was exercising in the gym when he died this week, aged 72. Mann's polo-playing son Jack, by his first marriage, was previously named as Prince Harry 's 'real best man'. Mann was born into a life of privilege and had a distinguished military career before his entanglement in the coup. His father George captained the England cricket team in the 1940s and was an heir to the Watney Mann brewing empire. After Sandhurst, he served in the Scots Guards and SAS in Cyprus, Germany, Norway and Northern Ireland, volunteering as a reservist in the first Gulf war in 1991. In 1996, Mann formed the mercenary or 'Private Military Company' Sandline with former Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer, operating in Angola, Sierra Leone. In 2004, Mann hit the headlines when he and 69 other ex-soldiers were arrested during a stop-off at Harare Airport to be loaded with £100k of weapons and equipment intended to engineer the coup in Equatorial Guinea and overthrow the government of President Teodoro Obiang. Mann and the other conspirators claimed they were merely flying to the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide security for diamond mines, but after a trial in Harare, he was given seven years for attempting to buy arms for an alleged coup, while 66 other men were acquitted. Thatcher, nicknamed 'Scratcher', meanwhile, was arrested at home in Cape Town and eventually pleaded guilty to 'negligently supplying financial assistance' to the plot. The coup was financed by Lebanese fixer Eli Calil, nicknamed 'Smelly' by his ex-public school co-conspirators, who later died falling downstairs at his home in Holland Park, West London. President Obiang promised that he would eat Mann's testicles and drag his naked body through the streets, should he ever get the chance. In 2006, Coup! a TV movie was made about the affair, written by actor and comedy writer John Fortune, of Bremner, Bird and Fortune fame, starring Jared Harris as Mann and Robert Bathurst as Thatcher. Then in 2007, a court in Zimbabwe ruled that Mann should be extradited to Equatorial Guinea after a shady agreement between the two governments branded the 'Oil for Mann' deal. The then Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe secured a large amount of oil from Guinea, widely believed to be in return for sending Mann north to meet his fate. Multi-millionaire Mann was thrown into the notorious hell-hole of Black Beach Prison, where he was clapped in leg irons and would serve less than two years of a 34-year sentence, though he suffered with malaria more than once, caged in a tiny cell in solitary confinement. Back home, Mann's loyal wife Amanda, fighting with others for her husband's release, displayed unquenchable spirit, acquiring a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: 'A man is for Christmas. Not for life.' In 2009 he was granted a 'complete pardon on humanitarian grounds' by President Obiang, the man he had tried to depose, and settled in the New Forest with his wife Amanda, but last year the pair were reported to have split. Last year, the Mail's Richard Eden reported that Mann had left Amanda, mother of four of his seven children, who campaigned tirelessly for his release and was apparently being comforted by a woman more than 20 years his junior. 'Simon and Amanda have split up,' a friend said, adding that Mann has moved out of the house on the south coast where they've lived since shortly after his release in 2009. Mann's next scheme was growing cannabis in North Macedonia, it was reported. Eden reported: 'They are getting divorced,' the chum tells me, saying that the marriage has been 'very difficult' ever since Mann's return from Africa. 'They decided to stay together until their youngest child left home.' More recently, Mann's polo-playing son Jack was in the news. He had an intended business trip to Libya interrupted when he and colleagues attempted to fly in from Malta. The authorities decided that their paperwork needed to be 'rectified' – a process which took five days. Last year, the Daily Telegraph interviewed Mann who claimed that Thatcher's role in the coup attempt was far more than just a 'negligent financier'. The plot was seeded in August 2003, when Calil summoned Mann to his grand mansion in Chelsea, after being approached by Severo Moto, the exiled opposition leader in Equatorial Guinea, who wanted to overthrow the tyrannical Obiang. Mann claimed Calil told him that King Juan Carlos of Spain, of which Equatorial Guinea is a former colony, and the then-prime minister of Spain José Maria Aznar, knew about the coup and approved of it. As a reward, Mann would have access to oil rights once Moto was in power. Mann was also attracted by the danger and adventure that the plan involved, and believed that removing a despotic dictator would justify the ethics of the job. He told Calil he would do it. Putting together a team of mercenaries – armed with guns, rocket launchers and mortars – to carry out the coup would cost $2.5 million, he calculated, but Calil's funds were frozen due to a criminal investigation in France. Calil introduced Mann to a businessman who would become a silent partner in the scheme, but Mann wanted his own man and approached Thatcher. Sir Mark was an old friend; a close neighbour in Cape Town, where both men had homes; and, the Telegraph reported, something of an SAS groupie. During a walk on Table Mountain, Mann briefed Sir Mark on the plot and asked if he would invest. 'Mark was incredibly enthusiastic', Mann told the Telegraph. 'But he was not just keen to share the spoils of our adventure in Equatorial Guinea – he wanted to play an active role in [planning] the operation.' Mann needed a helicopter for the fast movement of supplies and troops and Sir Mark, a trained helicopter pilot, had the connections and the cash to source the required aircraft.
Daily Mail
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Ex-SAS officer Simon Mann who led failed African 'Wonga Coup' involving Mark Thatcher has died 'while exercising' aged 72
Simon Mann, the colourful mercenary and ex-SAS officer jailed for leading the so-called Wonga Coup involving Sir Mark Thatcher in central Africa 20 years ago has died, MailOnline can reveal. Old Etonian Mann, who also served in the Scots Guards after Sandhurst, was one of a group of 70 mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe for attempting to stage a coup in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in 2004. Businessman Sir Mark, son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was later arrested in South Africa and, like Mann, admitted a part in the coup attempt. It is believed that multi-millionaire and father-of-seven Mann was exercising in the gym when he died this week, aged 72. Mann was born into a life of privilege and had a distinguished military career before his entanglement in the coup. His father George captained the England cricket team in the 1940s and was an heir to the Watney Mann brewing empire. After Sandhurst, he served in the Scots Guards and SAS in Cyprus, Germany, Norway and Northern Ireland, volunteering as a reservist in the first Gulf war in 1991. In 1996, Mann formed the mercenary or 'Private Military Company' Sandline with former Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer, operating in Angola, Sierra Leone. In 2004, Mann hit the headlines when he and 69 other ex-soldiers were arrested during a stop-off at Harare Airport to be loaded with £100k of weapons and equipment intended to engineer the coup in Equatorial Guinea and overthrow the government of President Teodoro Obiang. Mann and the other conspirators claimed they were merely flying to the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide security for diamond mines, but after a trial in Harare, he was given seven years for attempting to buy arms for an alleged coup, while 66 other men were acquitted. Thatcher, nicknamed 'Scratcher', meanwhile, was arrested at home in Cape Town and eventually pleaded guilty to 'negligently supplying financial assistance' to the plot. The coup was financed by Lebanese fixer Eli Calil, nicknamed 'Smelly' by his ex-public school co-conspirators, who later died falling downstairs at his home in Holland Park, West London. President Obiang promised that he would eat Mann's testicles and drag his naked body through the streets, should he ever get the chance. In 2006, Coup! a TV movie was made about the affair, written by actor and comedy writer John Fortune, of Bremner, Bird and Fortune fame, starring Jared Harris as Mann and Robert Bathurst as Thatcher. Then in 2007, a court in Zimbabwe ruled that Mann should be extradited to Equatorial Guinea after a shady agreement between the two governments branded the 'Oil for Mann' deal. The then Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe secured a large amount of oil from Guinea, widely believed to be in return for sending Mann north to meet his fate. Multi-millionaire Mann was thrown into the notorious hell-hole of Black Beach Prison, where he was clapped in leg irons and would serve less than two years of a 34-year sentence, though he suffered with malaria more than once, caged in a tiny cell in solitary confinement. Back home, Mann's loyal wife Amanda, fighting with others for her husband's release, displayed unquenchable spirit, acquiring a T-shirt emblazoned with the slogan: 'A man is for Christmas. Not for life.' In 2009 he was granted a 'complete pardon on humanitarian grounds' by President Obiang, the man he had tried to depose, and settled in the New Forest with his wife Amanda, but last year the pair were reported to have split. Last year, the Mail's Richard Eden reported that Mann had left Amanda, mother of four of his seven children, who campaigned tirelessly for his release and was apparently being comforted by a woman more than 20 years his junior. 'Simon and Amanda have split up,' a friend said, adding that Mann has moved out of the house on the south coast where they've lived since shortly after his release in 2009. Mann's next scheme was growing cannabis in North Macedonia, it was reported. Eden reported: 'They are getting divorced,' the chum tells me, saying that the marriage has been 'very difficult' ever since Mann's return from Africa. 'They decided to stay together until their youngest child left home.' More recently, Mann's polo-playing son Jack, by his first marriage, was named as Prince Harry's 'real best man' was in the news. He had an intended business trip to Libya interrupted when he and colleagues attempted to fly in from Malta. The authorities decided that their paperwork needed to be 'rectified' – a process which took five days. Last year, the Daily Telegraph interviewed Mann who claimed that Thatcher's role in the coup attempt was far more than just a 'negligent financier'. The plot was seeded in August 2003, when Calil summoned Mann to his grand mansion in Chelsea, after being approached by Severo Moto, the exiled opposition leader in Equatorial Guinea, who wanted to overthrow the tyrannical Obiang. Mann claimed Calil told him that King Juan Carlos of Spain, of which Equatorial Guinea is a former colony, and the then-prime minister of Spain José Maria Aznar, knew about the coup and approved of it. As a reward, Mann would have access to oil rights once Moto was in power. Mann was also attracted by the danger and adventure that the plan involved, and believed that removing a despotic dictator would justify the ethics of the job. He told Calil he would do it. Putting together a team of mercenaries – armed with guns, rocket launchers and mortars – to carry out the coup would cost $2.5 million, he calculated, but Calil's funds were frozen due to a criminal investigation in France. Calil introduced Mann to a businessman who would become a silent partner in the scheme, but Mann wanted his own man and approached Thatcher. Sir Mark was an old friend; a close neighbour in Cape Town, where both men had homes; and, the Telegraph reported, something of an SAS groupie. During a walk on Table Mountain, Mann briefed Sir Mark on the plot and asked if he would invest. 'Mark was incredibly enthusiastic', Mann told the Telegraph. 'But he was not just keen to share the spoils of our adventure in Equatorial Guinea – he wanted to play an active role in [planning] the operation.' Mann needed a helicopter for the fast movement of supplies and troops and Sir Mark, a trained helicopter pilot, had the connections and the cash to source the required aircraft.
