Simon Mann

Simon Mann's father, George, captained the England cricket team in the late 1940s and was an heir to a stake in the Watney Mann brewing empire that closed in 1979, having been acquired by Grand Metropolitan (which, in 1997, became Diageo plc on its merger with Guinness).

His mother, Margaret, was South African.

Simon Francis Mann (born 26 June 1952) is a British mercenary and former officer in the SAS.

He trained to be an officer at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards.

He later became a member of the SAS.

After leaving Eton College, Mann trained to be an officer at Sandhurst and was commissioned into the Scots Guards on 16 December 1972.

By 1976, he held the rank of Lieutenant.

He later became a member of the SAS and served in Cyprus, Germany, Norway and Northern Ireland before leaving the forces in 1985.

He volunteered as a reservist for the Gulf War.

Mann then entered the field of computer security; however, his interest in this industry lapsed when he returned from his service in the Gulf and he entered the oil industry to work with Tony Buckingham.

Buckingham also had a military background and had been a diver in the North Sea oil industry before joining a Canadian oil firm.

In 1993, UNITA rebels in Angola seized the port of Soyo, and closed its oil installations.

The Angolan government under José Eduardo Dos Santos sought mercenaries to seize back the port and asked for assistance from Buckingham who had by now formed his own company.

On leaving the military, he co-founded Sandline International with fellow ex-Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer in 1996.

Sandline operated mostly in Angola and Sierra Leone, but a contract with the government of Papua New Guinea attracted a significant amount of negative publicity in what became known as the Sandline affair.

Mann went on to establish Sandline International with fellow ex-Scots Guards Colonel Tim Spicer in 1996.

The company operated mostly in Angola and Sierra Leone, but in 1997 Sandline received a commission from the government of Papua New Guinea to suppress a rebellion on the island of Bougainville and the company came to international prominence, but received much negative publicity following the Sandline affair.

On 7 March 2004, Mann is alleged to have led the 2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt.

He was arrested by Zimbabwean police in Harare airport along with 64 other mercenaries.

He eventually served three years of a four-year prison sentence in Zimbabwe, and less than two years of a 34 years and four months sentence in Equatorial Guinea.

Sandline International announced the closure of the company's operations on 16 April 2004.

In an interview on the Today Programme, Mann indicated that the operations in Angola had netted more than £10,000,000.

On 7 March 2004, Mann and 69 others were arrested in Zimbabwe when their Boeing 727 was seized by security forces during a stop-off at Harare's airport to be loaded with £100,000 worth of weapons and equipment.

The men were charged with violating the country's immigration, firearms and security laws and later accused of engaging in an attempt to stage a coup d'état in Equatorial Guinea.

Meanwhile, eight suspected mercenaries, one of whom later died in prison, were detained in Equatorial Guinea in connection with the alleged plot.

Mann and the others claimed that they were not on their way to Equatorial Guinea but were in fact flying to the Democratic Republic of Congo to provide security for diamond mines.

Mann and his colleagues were put on trial in Zimbabwe, and, on 27 August, Mann was found guilty of attempting to buy arms for an alleged coup plot and sentenced to 7 years imprisonment.

66 of the others were acquitted.

On 25 August 2004, Sir Mark Thatcher, son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was arrested at his home in Cape Town, South Africa.

He eventually pleaded guilty (under a plea bargain) to negligently supplying financial assistance for the plot.

The 14 men in the mercenary advance guard that were caught in Equatorial Guinea were sentenced to jail for 34 years.

Among the advance guard was Nick du Toit who claimed that he had been introduced to Thatcher by Mann.

Investigations later revealed in Mann's holdings' financial records that large transfers of money were made to du Toit, as well as approximately US$2 million coming in from an unknown and untraceable source.

On 10 September Mann was sentenced to seven years in jail.

His compatriots received one-year sentences for violating immigration laws and their two pilots got 16 months.

The group's Boeing 727 was seized, as well as the US$180,000 that was found on board the plane.

A friend of Mann, Nigel Morgan, known for his personal ties to the South African Secret Service, was alleged to have betrayed his knowledge of the plot to the South African authorities.

The journalist Adam Roberts has argued that Morgan was in the unusual situation of being both a supporter of the coup and also an agent for the government, and that Mann knew Morgan was acting as an informant – but as a way of sounding out whether or not the South African government would care.

Academic R.W. Johnson, on the other hand, argued that only the 'shambolic state of the South African intelligence services' explains why an aborted 19 February attempt by Mann – which fell apart when a plane set to meet them in Zambia suffered a bird strike – was allowed to get off the ground in Polokwane Airport.

He emphasises that Morgan had personal and professional ties to Johann Smith, a South African Special Forces veteran and security adviser to President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and most likely alerted President Thabo Mbeki after the failed first attempt, who in turn tipped off the government of Robert Mugabe.