In this Thursday, June 19, 2008 file photo, British ex-military officer Simon Mann,... (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — A British coup-plotter and four South African mercenaries pardoned for attempting the overthrow of Equatorial Guinea's government were freed from prison Tuesday in the tiny oil-rich African nation, the country's chief judge said.
Simon Mann and his co-defendants were convicted in a trial that aired a plot in which well-connected Britons and others sought to install an exiled opposition figure in Africa's No. 3 oil producing nation. The coup unraveled before it even began, when Mann and a planeload of other mercenaries were arrested in Zimbabwe where they were to buy assault rifles, grenades and anti-tank rockets.
The U.S. government reportedly got wind of the plot and blew the whistle, though no U.S. government official ever confirmed that. Several leading U.S. oil companies, including Exxon Mobil, Amerada Hess and ChevronTexaco, operate in Equatorial Guinea.
Mann, 57, who was born into a world of wealth and privilege, had been serving a 35-year sentence in Equatorial Guinea for the 2004 plot.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who himself took power in a coup 30 years ago, on Monday gave the five men "a full pardon for humanitarian reasons," Supreme Court Chief Justice Jose Obono Olo told The Associated Press. Mann and his accomplices were freed later Tuesday, Obono said.
The case ensnared Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, as Mann implicated him as a chief bankroller in the coup plot along with Equatorial Guinean-based Lebanese businessman Eli Calil. Thatcher pleaded guilty in a South African court to unwittingly helping fund the operation. He was fined and given a suspended sentence.
Mann said Calil told him the government of Spain, the country's former colonial power, was aware of and supported the plot. The plan was to put into power opposition leader Severo Moto, who is exiled in Madrid, and get some control over the country's oil wealth.
Human rights groups accuse Obiang of using the oil wealth to make his family fabulously rich while most of his countrymen live in squalor.
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