Mann Miller - Channel 4



Mann Miller TX Script FINAL

11 March 2008

Malabo. Capital of Africa’s most secretive oil-rich dictatorship. Target of an audacious plan hatched by a gang of white buccaneers. Violent regime change in dead of night.

Simon Mann was meant to fly in here with 70 mercenaries, guns and ammo. Instead, four years on, he’s been flown in here in shackles – and we’re here to meet him.

The regime he’d sought to overthrow has finally got him in its infamous Black Beach jail – and we’re the first western TV crew to get in there. We’ve learned he’ll face charges of terrorist conspiracy and of attempting to murder the president.

Now, it’s payback time.

Simon Mann has been trussed up like this since he got here a month ago. This ex-SAS Squadron Leader-turned soldier of fortune-turned trophy-prisoner has decided his only hope now is to come clean – and try to implicate others whom the regime suspects were involved.

Simon Mann

Alleged coup leader

“Well, you know, it was a f***-up. And I have to carry the can for that. Really and truly, I blame myself most for simply not saying “Cut” two months before we were arrested. That’s what I should have done and there, you know, I was bloody stupid. [Laughs]. Mea culpa.”

He looked older and thinner. He was angry about his extradition, or as he put it, his “illegal violent abduction” from his hellhole jail in Zimbabwe, to his new home at Black Beach.

SM: “ Basically I was kidnapped from Chikrubi and smuggled out of Zimbabwe with gratuitous violence.

JM: Can you be more detailed about the violence?

Well the way I was pushed and shoved around, thrown into the back of a truck, smacked with an AK, generally moved around and also the way in which I was held, because I was held with leg-irons. Not nice ones, like these, and handcuffs, behind my back [demonstrates] which is extremely painful. In a room with nowhere to sit down. So the only thing that you can do is fall down. And then you can’t get up.”

Right behind me, and out of view of our cameras, his chief prosecutor, the Attorney General, as well as the Minister for National Security and heavily armed soldiers. They say Mann’s a very dangerous prisoner, and also a target who has to be carefully guarded.

JM: “I am conscious of the fact that you are yet come to trial. Are you happy to speak to us?”

SM: “Yep, I am perfectly happy and this is of my own volition. I was asked this morning whether I was prepared to do this or not. I said yes.”

JM: What have conditions been like here, and how have you been treated ?

SM: “I have been treated well. Obviously I’m a prisoner and it’s not a five star hotel, but I am mean, I am being treated well. My accommodation’s good, there’s water, there’s food and I am under no coercion.”

JM: “Have you been interrogated since you got here?”

SM: “Well, I have been interviewed. [Laughs] I think it is a better word to use than “interrogate” because, as I say, I have been put under no coercion.”

JM: “And the “no coercion” applies also to conditions? Have you been asked for example to name names? Have you been offered a plea-bargain of any sort?”

SM: “Um, no, I have been helping the authorities here as best as I can with this sorry story.”

If they hadn’t struck oil here, there wouldn’t have been any story. Nobody cared about what went on in this steamy jungle dictatorship, with its grim human rights record, except those unfortunate enough to live here.

But with the black gold gushing, someone had a better idea about who should run EG – Equatorial Guinea. What became known as “The EG Project” would place its riches in someone else’s hands.

MILLER PIECE TO CAMERA

JM: “Several accounts of the plan have it that just past midnight on the 8th March 2004, an advance party of mercenaries – who’d earlier flown in on this old Antonov here – would first secure the airport, seizing the control tower and changing the frequency so that they could communicate directly with Simon Mann’s Boeing, loaded with 70 more mercenaries and weapons from Zimbabwe. Thirty minutes after the airport had been secured, another aircraft, flying the exiled opposition leader in from Spain, would land. It would then be three o’clock in the morning.”

But Simon Mann’s Boeing never took off. The whole plot was busted; Mann and his men were arrested in Zimbabwe as they prepared to pick up their planeload of guns.

The advance party, up in Equatorial Guinea, was rounded up the next day. It was led by Mann’s friend, the South African mercenary, Niek du Toit. He got 34 years in Black Beach.

At 55 years of age, Mann’s worked out that he may never leave. His best bet: to sing like a canary – although until now, he has never publicly admitted his involvement.

SM: “Well, I was involved. And I was, if you like, the manager. Below me were quite a number of people. Including those who were arrested with me in Zimbabwe, including those who are still, who have been sentenced, they are doing prison sentences here. And of course, above me in the machine, were other people..um as well. So I was, if you like, The Manager. Not the architect. And not the main man.”

JM: “Who was the main man?”

SM: “Ely Calil.”

He’s an elusive man, Ely Calil. A Lebanese-Nigerian multi-millionaire businessman and British citizen, who divides his time between London and Paris. This, the only known photograph of him. It’s more than thirty years old.

Ever since Simon Mann’s arrest in Zimbabwe, Ely Calil’s name has been linked to the plot, which he was widely alleged to have bankrolled. Ely Calil has consistently denied any involvement.

This is the first time the self-confessed “Manager” of the planned coup d’etat has openly identified Ely Calil as its “main man.”

It’s a claim that’s at the heart of a case being fought by the government of Equatorial Guinea in the House of Lords – where Ely Calil has also denied his involvement. The EG government has so far lost in the High Court and in the Court of Appeal.

In a rare statement Ely Calil told us:

“I have a great deal of sympathy with Simon Mann’s predicament. I am sure he is in considerable distress. He has made many contradictory statements. ”

Ely Calil is correct in stating there have been contradictory statements from Simon Mann.

Channel 4 News cannot corroborate Simon Mann’s claims. He has produced no evidence to back them and has told us there was no written contract between him and Calil.

Shortly after his arrest in Zimbabwe, Mann signed a confession that heavily implicated Ely Calil in the genesis of the plot. Nine months later, in an affidavit he said was freely made, Simon Mann retracted his earlier confession, saying it was made under duress.

The Ely Calil statement continues:

“The only statement he has made freely was an affidavit in Zimbabwe in which he confirmed that his original allegations about me were made under duress. That is the only statement of his which is reliable. I confirm that I had no involvement in or responsibility for the alleged coup. I am surprised that Channel 4 News has allowed itself to be used as a propaganda tool for the government of Equatorial Guinea.”

In our interview, Simon Mann now insists that Calil was the “main man” – and that he stands by his original confession statement.

JM: That statement was made not under duress?

SM: Well, actually, that statement was made under duress. Yes. But, never the less, it’s true [laughs].

SM: I mean, if somebody wants to do me a favour, what they could is put a pair of handcuffs on Calil and chuck him on an aeroplane to Malibu (sic).”

That’s not Malibu, California, by the way. It’s Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, where the government would also love to have Ely Calil answer some questions.

STILLS Moto x 2

They accuse him of backing Severo Moto, Equatorial Guinea’s would-be President, last heard of in exile in Spain. Moto’s always denied his involvement; approached for a response to Mann’s allegations, he declined to comment.

SYNC (ITN)

Simon Mann

“I’m not very happy with Ely Calil. Because, quite honestly, him and Severo Moto, Ely Calil and Severo Moto grossly misled me. They gave me the very strong impression that things were diabolically bad here. And that a regime change was a crying need. They also told me that the regime was faltering, was in a state of collapse. I mean, coming here now, obviously I was told a load of rubbish. Basically. Well, either that or Equatorial Guinea has performed the most unbelievable change in four years!”

It’s hard to see how the mercenary could possibly have concluded that the country’s changed as he’s been shackled in solitary since his arrival in Black Beach a month ago. As his trial approaches, he has obvious reasons for changing his tune.

Whatever Simon Mann may say now, the reality is that the regime of President Theodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo had – and still has – one of the worst human rights records in Africa. He runs a paranoid police state and is accused of siphoning off billions of dollars of his country’s newly acquired oil wealth.

This is the modest new palace he’s building. We had to film it discretely.

Whoever deposed Obiang would have got their hands on all that lovely oil.

Violent regime change in oil-rich dictatorships rarely goes smoothly though.

If he had pulled it off, Mann stood to make millions of dollars – or “wonga” as he calls it. And then he’d likely have scored juicy new contracts.

JM: You famously coined the term “wonga” -- was ‘wonga’ everything to do with it or was there more?

SM: I said earlier in this interview that yes, money and business reasons were a motivation, but the primary motivation was to help, as I saw it, the people of Equatorial Guinea, who were in a lot of trouble.

JM: “Do you feel at all that this whole enterprise, the Equatorial Guinea Project, was something from a bygone era, like out of a Freddie Forsyth novel, that at heart it was an arrogant scheme cooked up by a bunch of greedy white buccaneers?

SM: “No, I don’t think that at all actually. Now whether you want to think that the whole thing was a swash-buckling f***-up, well, obviously it is. Because it failed. [Laughs] You know, um, but that wasn’t how it seemed at the time.”

No swash-buckling tale would be complete without a knight of the realm. Enter Sir Mark Thatcher, Mann’s old friend in Cape Town, who was convicted and heavily fined in South Africa for his part in the plot, under anti-mercenary laws. Thatcher always claimed he was an “unwitting” conspirator though – that he’d leased a helicopter which he says he thought was just an air ambulance. Simon Mann insists he was involved in the plot.

JM: “Could you tell me about the involvement of Mark Thatcher: did it go beyond the leasing of a helicopter?”

SM: “Um, ya, he was a part of the team.”

In a statement to Channel 4 News, Sir Mark Thatcher said:

“Simon Mann is an old friend of mine for whom I have the utmost sympathy throughout this whole ghastly process. Clearly what’s happening to him now is very worrying and he must be frightened and accutely distressed, poor man. I have nothing to add to the statements that I gave to the relevant authorities in 2004, which are a matter of public record.”

Two other prominent names have cropped up in reports about the planned coup. One, “J H Archer” – thought to be novelist and noble Lord, Jeffrey. The other: EU Commissioner Peter Mandelson. Both of them knew Calil.

JM: What do you know about the alleged roles of Jeffrey Archer, in the funding, and Peter Mandelson?

SM: They’ve got none at all. God knows where that came from. I mean that really is a mystery to me.

Simon Mann and his friends might just have got away with their plan had it not been the world’s worst-kept secret. Rumours had even reached Equatorial Guinea of what was afoot. The Obiang regime was tipped-off by a South African businessman who’d got wind of it.

SM: “We were in a desperate situation. I knew that he’d basically blown the whistle. And we went ahead because the other indications I was getting – ie from the Spanish government and from the South African government, and in this case most especially, the South African government – was that ‘We want you to go, so go’… There was no nod and a wink from the UK. And there was no nod and a wink from the United States of America. Absolutely not.”

But it all went off at half-cock. The South African government told Channel 4 News that Mann’s version of events was a “fabrication.” South Africa had sought to foil the planned coup, it said, and was thanked by Equatorial Guinea for doing so.

Spain, the former colonial power here, which has failed to secure big new oil contracts and had provided a base for the the self-declared President-in-Exile, told us Mann’s allegations were “completely baseless.”

Convicted in Zimbabwe for illegally buying weapons, Simon Mann spent four years in Chikurubi jail – which has an even more fearsome reputation than Black Beach. He told me in hushed whispers that up to 15 inmates were being killed there every day.

Just as he was about to be released from Zimbabwe, his extradition was ordered. Mann was still appealing this when he was bundled onto the plane to EG.

SM: “Here am I, accused of all these terrible things, when in actual fact, nothing happened. There was no attempt. We didn’t ever get any weapons. We didn’t get on an aircraft to come here. Niek de Toit never had any weapons. So yes, certainly the intent was there. And it was a f***-up. But now, I am kidnapped and then smuggled out of a country with violence in complete contravention to Zimbabwe’s laws. I am actually a victim of a far more serious crime than any crime I have committed.”

Apart from his illegal purchase of a large arsenal, that is, and his stated intention to invade a sovereign territory and overthrow its government.

Today, there’s a glittering new Gulf State taking shape here, on the Gulf of Guinea. Vast new highways are being carved out of virgin jungle as glass and steel corporate towers and apartments rise out of the forest.

Aware of its embarrassingly bad reputation and reliant on its foreign investors to suck out its oil, the government knows it must be seen to be fair in its treatment of Mann. It says he can see a lawyer whenever he wants. The Attorney General says he’ll invite an independent judge from the African Union to the trail, due later this month. We’re not in Nuremberg, he said.

Jose Olo Obono

Attorney General

“Some of the crimes committed by Simon Mann carry penalties that range from lengthy imprisonment to the death penalty. This is the law of Equatorial Guinea. But we have formally agreed to rule out the death penalty in Simon Mann’s case.”

In fact, here in EG they believe that keeping him alive – and talking – strengthens their hand. Because they fear someone may try to kill him or bust him out, security is everything.

We cannot corroborate Simon Mann’s comments on conditions in Black Beach jail – we were forbidden to film anything save our interview. But Amnesty International continues to raise serious concerns about what’s going on in there.

Simon Mann may have plenty of time to become very familiar with his new home. Back in Britain, he has a four-year-old son he’s never seen.

SM: “I regret all that. Terribly. You know, but you go tiger shooting and you sort of don’t expect the tiger to win.”

JM: “So you do have deep regrets.”

SM: “Yes. I’ve been saying how sorry I am to everybody for four years now actually. [Laughs] I’m going to write it on my forehead. [Laughs] ‘Sorry!’”

Simon Mann’s about to have another opportunity to say sorry. The mea culpa-mercenary is due to stand trial in just a few days time. The ex-SAS man has had virtually no chance to prepare a defence. Perhaps he thought this was the best chance he’d get.

Ends///

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