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Thatcher's Son Pleads Guilty in Coup Plot, Avoiding Prison
January 14, 2005
By MICHAEL WINES
JOHANNESBURG, Jan. 13 - Sir Mark Thatcher, the son of a
British political legend who became mired last year in a
bizarre coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, abandoned his
claims of innocence on Thursday and pleaded guilty in a
Cape Town Court to helping finance mercenaries who were
behind the failed putsch.
But as part of a plea agreement that spared him a potential
prison sentence, Sir Mark, who is a hereditary baronet,
maintained that his role was unwitting and that he believed
he was investing $275,000 in a helicopter service for a
mining venture until he began to doubt the project's true
goals in January 2004.
The coup attempt collapsed spectacularly that March, as the
Equatorial Guinea security police broke up a network of 20
people suspected of plotting the overthrow and the Zimbabwe
police arrested 70 more at the Harare airport as the
mercenaries' jet landed to pick up a weapons shipment.
Most of them are now in prison, including the man accused
of being the mastermind of the plot, Simon Mann, a former
British Special Forces soldier, longtime mercenary and Sir
Mark's Cape Town neighbor and friend.
On Thursday, Sir Mark, 51, admitted violating South
Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act, which bars
civilians from involvement in military activities abroad
without government permission. He was fined three million
rand, about $500,000, and given a four-year suspended
prison sentence.
He was expected to leave immediately for the United States,
where his American-born wife and their two children have
lived since the South African police arrested him in
August. George van Niekerk, a member of his legal team,
wrote in a statement that Sir Mark "will continue to
cooperate, to the limited extent of his knowledge," with a
South African inquiry into mercenary activity tied to the
coup.
The statement allowed that Sir Mark "should have exercised
more caution" in his investment, but otherwise denied any
intentional wrongdoing. Sir Mark's lawyers declined to
comment further on the record.
The plea agreement was nevertheless an ignominious
admission for Sir Mark, the son of Lady Thatcher, the
former prime minister who dominated British politics for
much of the 1980's. Sir Mark's legal team had dismissed
charges against him as "nonsense" after his arrest in
August.
The agreement was also a symbolic victory for South
Africa's government, which has long been accused of failing
to enforce its laws regulating mercenaries. Decades of
southern African conflict in the late 20th century made
South Africa a training ground for soldiers of fortune.
Executive Outcomes, a now-defunct South African mercenary
company organized by Mr. Mann, was the template for many of
the for-profit armies operating today in trouble spots like
Iraq.
In the plea agreement and in the lawyer's public statement,
Sir Mark was cast as a sidelines player in a sprawling
effort to unseat Equatorial Guinea's president, Teodoro
Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, the unchallenged ruler of a nation
almost the size of Maryland that would have gone unnoticed
if offshore gushers had not turned it into one of Africa's
largest oil producers lately.
The plea agreement states only that Sir Mark, a licensed
helicopter pilot, was approached by Mr. Mann in November
2003 for help in finding a helicopter for a mining venture
in Guinea Bisseau. Sir Mark located a helicopter, but Mr.
Mann rejected it as inadequate, and told Sir Mark in
December that he had found a better-suited one for Sir Mark
to lease.
"At this stage," the agreement states, Sir Mark "began to
doubt Mann's true intentions and suspected that Mann might
be planning to become involved in mercenary activity." His
doubts aside, Sir Mark invested money in the operation,
only to lose it when the coup imploded.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/international/africa/14thatcher.html?ex=1106683906&ei=1&en=a08f79f58de23ebe
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