FACING EXECUTION: Captain Simon Mann, shown here playing a role in an ITV dramatisation of Bloody Sunday is locked up in Harare
A FORMER SAS officer from Hampshire faces execution after being accused of plotting a coup in an oil-rich African state.
Simon Mann, who is reported to have a home in the New Forest, is locked up in a notorious prison outside the Zimbabwean capital Harare, where conditions are said to be among the worst in the continent.
Opponents say Capt Mann was the leader of 60 mercenaries prepared to kill for money and topple the government of Equatorial Guinea, which is supported by South Africa and Zimbabwe.
Zimbabwe's foreign minister Stan Mudenge has threatened Capt Mann and the rest of the men with "the severest punishment available in our statutes, including capital punishment."
Capt Mann was reported to own a mansion on the banks of the Beaulieu River, but is currently based near Cape Town, South Africa.
The "dog of war" has a most colourful past - he entered the services by joining the Scots Guards, once commanded a 30-strong team of underwater specialists, and did one tour of duty in Northern Ireland before leaving the army in the late 1980s.
But the Old Etonian rejoined the services in 1990 to serve on the British Gulf War commander's staff in Riyadh as an intelligence officer before leaving the army to work as a computer salesman.
But, according to one national paper, in 1994 he helped set up Sandline International, a private company whose involvement in shipping arms to Sierra Leone in contravention of a UN embargo brought heavy criticism from the Foreign Affairs Committee.
Date Published: Monday 15 March 2004
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