[Peace-discuss] African incident

Fri Mar 19 10:31:17 CST 2004

[At the last meeting Durl raised a question about the Zmbabwean arrest of
mercenaries. Here's the best account I've seen of the matter.  --CGE]

	Rent-a-Coup: Who's Who
	Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg)
	NEWS
	March 12, 2004
	Posted to the web March 12, 2004
	By Sam Sole And Stefaans BrÃ¼mmer

The men behind the alleged Equatorial Guinea coup plot represent a who's
who of South Africa's mercenary market - but key players also have links
to the American and British security establishments.

In Harare, where 67 suspected mercenaries were arrested last Sunday,
Zimbabwean Home Affairs Minister Kembo Mohadi claimed later in the week
that Britain's MI6 intelligence service, the United States's CIA and the
Spanish secret service had been involved.

This, Mohadi said, had been confessed by Simon Mann, one of the mission's
principal planners. Mann was arrested in Harare alongside his "troops",
who had arrived separately by Boeing 727 from South Africa.

Mohadi's claim should be taken with a pinch of salt, as the Zimbabwean
government has made a habit of implicating the United Kingdom and the US
in latter-day colonial plots. But it is intriguing that both Mann and his
alleged principal co-conspirator, Nic du Toit, do have direct or indirect
links with the security establishments in these countries.

Mann, a former British special forces soldier who has been resident in
Cape Town and who is known for his association with disbanded South
African mercenary company Executive Outcomes, was earlier a senior member
of Sandline International, a private military firm which has been regarded
as close to the UK security establishment.

Du Toit was arrested with 14 cohorts earlier on Sunday in Equatorial
Guinea. On Wednesday he "confessed" on national television that the plan
had been to remove the West African country's President, Teodoro Obiang
Nguema Mbasogo, from power to make way for exiled opposition leader Severo
Moto Nsa. The latter has denied his involvement.

Du Toit is a director of Miltary Technical Services (MTS), a Pretoria
company whose founder, Tai Minnaar, worked for the CIA in the 1970s and
seems to have retained contact with the organisation until his mysterious
death in 2001.

The Mail & Guardian has obtained more information putting Mann and du Toit
at the centre of the alleged plot. Mann's offshore company, Logo
Logistics, co-ordinated the operation.

Logo is understood to have signed contracts in recent months with Du
Toit's MTS, and with a close corporation of which Du Toit is the only
director, Triple Option Trading 610.

Logo, which has, via a UK spokesperson, denied the coup plot, saying the
men were en route to fulfil a mining security contract in the Democratic
Republic of Congo, has the profile of a mercenary company. Its website
reportedly advertises its services as including "risk intelligence and
assessment, support helicopter operations, service support in harsh
environments, rough field and parachute air re-supply".

MTS's role in this operation, according to the M&G's information, was to
supply "trained professionals".

Various reports have put Mann, Du Toit and an unidentified third
individual at the scene of earlier negotiations for arms in Harare. Their
shopping list, presented to Colonel Tshinga Dube, the head of the
parastatal Zimbabwe Defence Industries, allegedly included AK-47s and
hundreds of thousands of rounds of ammnunition.

The Boeing and alleged mercenaries' stopover in Harare, en route to
Equatorial Guinea, appears to have been to collect the arms, for which
$180 000 had allegedly already been paid when the men were arrested.

The bulk of the alleged mercenaries are South Africans, Namibians and
Angolans, and many of them are said to be former 32-Battalion members -
the multinational mercenary force used by the former South African Defence
Force during the apartheid era war in Namibia and Angola.

Members of this battalion also formed the backbone of Executive Outcomes
during its adventures in Angola in the mid-1990s and other African and
Third World hotspots.

Here are some of the key players:

Simon Mann

Mann has a long association with private military companies, including the
trailblazer in the genre, South Africa's Executive Outcomes.

Zimbabwe's Mohadi claims Mann was promised a cash payment of Â£1-million
and oil exploitation rights in Equatorial Guinea for his part in arranging
a coup against President Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Mann was one of the founders of Sandline International, a London-based
private military company that worked closely with Executive Outcomes, the
company formed in 1989 by former apartheid special forces operatives.

Executive Outcomes and later Sandline played a key role in major private
military interventions, first in Angola in support of the MPLA government
against Jonas Savimbi's Unita rebels and later in Sierra Leone, in the
latter case allegedly with the tacit support of the British security
services.

Mann's background made him the perfect intermediary for the negotiation
and conduct of private operations in support of British military,
diplomatic or commercial interests. A member of a prominent British
brewing family, he attended Eton before joining the Scots Guards and later
the elite Special Air Service. After leaving the SAS Mann specialised in
computer security systems.

In the early 1990s Mann linked up with another ex-military man, Anthony
Buckingham, who had oil interests. The Angolan government reportedly
approached Canadian company Ranger Oil, with which Buckingham was
involved, to help protect the country's oil installations.

That led to the comprehensive contract Executive Outcomes clinched to
shore up the MPLA government and turned the tide against Savimbi's rebels.

Nic du Toit

Du Toit is understood to be a former SADF special forces operator, who
later also worked for Executive Outcomes.

According to a 1999 paper by researcher Kareen Pech, Military Technical
Services (MTS), the company represented by Du Toit in the alleged coup
plot, was set up in 1989 under retired Major-General Tai Minnaar to
procure Soviet-issue helicopters and provide private military support
services.

Pech wrote: "Although some companies, like MTS, have the same business
interests, cross shareholdings and even shared personnel, Executive
Outcomes directors denied that they were associated with these companies."

Minnaar died in mysterious circumstances - allegedly due to poisoning - in
September 2001. His attempt to export to the US a so-called stockpile of
biological warfare agents, developed under apartheid South Africa's
chemical-biological warfare programme, was revealed by the M&G in 2002.

That attempt was made in conjunction with two former CIA operators and
with the knowledge of the FBI - which apparently blew the plan and shopped
Minnaar before it could be carried out.

Niel Steyl

Steyl was the pilot of the Boeing stopped in Harare, and is under arrest
there.

More is known about his brother, Crause Steyl, who has also been
implicated - by documentary evidence suggesting that his company, an air
ambulance service, was at least an intended partner.

Crause Steyl denies he had anything to do with the operation. He headed
the Executive Outcomes air operation during the mid-1990s and became
friendly at the time with Mann. Both were active in the Executive Outcomes
contract to shore up the Angolan government.

The M&G understands that a contract was finalised in January in terms of
which Triple A Aviation Services, Crause Steyl's company based in the Free
State town of Bethlehem, would have provided "aviation services" to Mann's
company Logo Logistics. Triple A trades as Air Ambulance Africa.

Steyl this week confirmed that Mann had approached him last year with a
proposal. "He said it would be like Angola again."

But Steyl denies he acceded. "I live in a small community. Everyone knows
me and I do very good work."