Coup pilot: SA govt stood back

[seemslikeadream]

Marléne Burger

...

However, he says, a telephone call “at the highest government level” some time in January or late February forced the National Intelligence Agency to set in motion a chain of events that resulted in the jailing of 69 soldiers of fortune in Zimbabwe and another group, led by Du Toit, be given “inhumanely long” prison sentences in Equatorial Guinea.

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Steyl (39) was in charge of ferrying exiled opposition leader Severo Moto from the Canary Islands to the Equatorial Guinean capital of Malabo within 30 minutes of a successful coup led by Mann, a notorious British soldier of fortune.

This week, Steyl told Britain’s Channel 4 that Mark Thatcher, who left South Africa last week within hours of being fined R3-million for his role in the plan, “knew a lot more” about the coup plan than he has admitted. “His role had to be kept hidden, because we knew that as the former British prime minister’s son, if it became known, the media would have a field day,” said Steyl, who was directly involved in Thatcher’s funding, selection and testing of a helicopter for use as a combined gunship and air ambulance.

Mann also offered assurances that the plan had the backing of then Spanish prime minister Jose-Maria Aznar, who had offered Moto a home in exile and was keen to gain a foothold in the burgeoning offshore oil industry in the former Spanish colony that is Africa’s third-largest producer of crude.
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“We were questioned by Spanish intelligence agents for about 20 minutes, but after Moto spoke with them, they told us we were free to go, despite the fact that I had entered the Canaries without a passport or visa, and normally, would have been arrested as an illegal immigrant.”

more
http://www.mg.co.za/articledirect.aspx?area=mg_flat&articleid=195912

[Zhade]

1. kick

kick

[seemslikeadream]

2. U.S. Link In Thatcher Coup Plot?

The prospect of Sir Mark Thatcher being allowed to return to the U.S. to rejoin his wife and children in Dallas became more uncertain last night, as new evidence emerged that his role in an African coup attempt may have been more central than has been admitted, and involved questionable activities in the U.S. A senior former state department official in Washington, Joseph Sala, has disclosed he was hired by the plotters to gain U.S. support for the coup. Sala tells a BBC3 TV program airing tonight (Monday) that he was offered $40,000 (£21,351) to promote the plotters' cause there.

Records for Sir Mark's mobile phone show that he was among those placing calls to a London businessman accused of masterminding the Washington plot. Eli Calil, a millionaire middleman in African oil deals and a friend of the Labour politician Peter Mandelson, was allegedly at the center of a group of London businessmen and mercenaries trying to promote their own candidate to take over the tiny but oil-rich state of Equatorial Guinea.



Its ruler, President Teodoro Obiang, was believed to be dying of cancer, and valuable oil concessions were hoped to be up for grabs. Much of the country's mushrooming oil industry is controlled by U.S. companies. Sir Mark is in limbo, staying at his mother's house in London while he attempts to renew his visa to gain entry to the U.S. The U.S. authorities are deciding whether to grant him admission, despite his having a criminal conviction.

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The new evidence, however, appears to place him at the center of events. Phone records which the Guardian newspaper has seen show him placing two international calls from his home in South Africa to the mobile phone of Eli Calil, then based in his London mansion in Chelsea. The calls were made within half an hour on February 2 last year, when planning for the coup was at its height. A fortnight earlier, Sir Mark had invested $275,000 during meetings in South Africa. Other alleged plotters had travelled to Spain to brief their candidate for president, the exiled African politician Severo Moto. In a third key leg of the alleged plan, a British businessman, Greg Wales, went to the U.S. and hired a lobbyist who had influence in Washington
more
http://freeinternetpress.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=2799

[DulceDecorum]

3. It just gets better and better.

This story just doesn't quit.