Simon Mann, a former British mercenary who had participated in 2004 in a failed coup in Equatorial Guinea, died of a heart attack by playing sports in the United Kingdom at 72, reported on Saturday May 10, the Daily Mail and the BBC, citing ” friends “ of the deceased.
Former British special forces officer SAS, Simon Mann had been arrested with 61 other alleged mercenaries in 2004 in Harare, Zimbabwe, where he recovered weapons before going to Malabo, capital of Equatorial Guinea.
He was to join a team led by the South African Nick du Toit, with the objective of overthrowing President Teodoro Obiang, who came to power in 1979. He had been sentenced to thirty-four years in prison at the end of a very publicized trial and staged by power.
Pardoned by President Obiang
Accused of being the brain suddenly, he had apologized at the end of the debates, saying himself “Glad that [le coup] did not happen “. A few weeks before the 2009 presidential election, he was finally pardoned by President Obiang and had returned to the UK.
Simon Mann had been trained in the very elitist Eton École, then at the Military Academy of Sandhurst, before entering the Guards scots, then becoming an officer in SAS.
In 2017, he had testified in Paris, on the side of the defense, in the trial of President Obiang, Teodorin, accused of having fraudulently built in France a considerable heritage. The latter was definitively sentenced in 2021 to three years in prison suspended and 30 million euros fine for embezzlement of public funds.
Source: Lemonde