British Mercenary to Stand Trial for Attempted Coup in Equatorial Guinea
June 13th, 2008Via: Reuters:
British mercenary Simon Mann will go on trial on Tuesday for leading a failed 2004 coup in Equatorial Guinea, the West African state’s public prosecutor said on Friday.
Jose Olo Obono said that Mann, arrested in 2004 in Zimbabwe with 70 mercenaries en route for oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, will face three main charges: crimes against the head of state, crimes against the government and crimes against the peace and independence of the state.
“The maximum sentence would be the death penalty … but I don’t think in this case we will seek the death penalty,” Olo Obono told Reuters.
Mann said in a television interview in March that he plotted to oust Equatorial Guinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled the former Spanish colony since 1979. Mann was extradited from Zimbabwe in February.
Equatorial Guinean authorities have said Mann has also testified that Mark Thatcher, the son of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, knew all about the scheme to topple the government of sub-Saharan Africa’s third largest oil producer, one of the continent’s most authoritarian.
Mark Thatcher has denied this.
Olo Obono said journalists, but not cameras, would be allowed into the courtroom to cover the Mann trial.
Related: Pentagon Link to Guinea Coup Plot
Equatorial Guinea’s dictator really does need to be overthrown. Yeah, it is probably a scenario just like The Dogs of War, where western commercial interests wanted a foreign leader whacked so they could put their own man in who will give them favorable business terms. But the dictator of Equatoral Guinea likes to EAT HIS POLITICAL ENEMIES’ BALLS, for christsakes.
http://www.takistopdrawer.us/2004/october/article_2004-October-11.html
I was thinking about that when I saw Condoleeza Rice warmly greeting Obiang Nguema when he was visited Washington a couple of years ago. She was happily shaking the very hands that cut a guy’s manhood off and ate them. Maybe Condi gets turned on by that kind of thing.
…and if you believe some of the more creative and colorful “unofficial” biographies of the USSA’s current leadership, they too have rather large appetites for flesh — and blood.
What’s interesting is that it is acceptable to believe horror stories about African sociopaths and their peculiarities, yet the possibility that such behavior might be exhibited by the powerful in our own “civilized” world, where even making such a suggestion immediately renders you a “insert disparaging adjective here” nutjob with a questionable grip on reality.
Yet viewed side-by-side, the reality of one dark psychopaths taste for Equitorial Guinean oysters and his pale counterparts habit of young Mexican girls are fundamentally not all that different. The only real difference lies in the perceptions of the person who unblinkingly accepts one and condemns the other, for reasons of tribal comfort.
That said, I think you’re dead right about Condi.