Conspiracy oil: A very British coup!

Coup!, John Fortune's half-satire, half-dramatised documentary on the failed attempt to seize Equatorial Guinea in 2004, has gained some useful publicity ahead of its showing this week.

Right-wing tabloids are steamed up over its portrayal of Baroness Thatcher at a Cape Town party given by her son. The former Prime Minister, played by Caroline Blakiston, is seen importuning every guest for a whisky refill. In all the fuss about whether Lady Thatcher is made to look like a drunk, however, there did not seem to be any outrage to spare for the events on which the TV drama was based.

Not only have they given Sir Mark a criminal record, his friend Simon Mann, a former Guards and SAS officer, is in jail in Zimbabwe for illegal arms buying. Nick du Toit, a Mann associate, is serving a 34-year sentence in Malabo, the capital of Equatorial Guinea, after confessing his part in a plot which, had it been allowed to proceed, could have caused mass bloodshed in the West African state.

Given the ingredients of the affair - a conspiracy apparently taken from a Frederick Forsyth thriller, not to mention a cast of public school adventurers who talked of "splodges of wonga" and gave each other nicknames such as "Nosher" and "Scratcher" - it is scarcely surprising that Coup! contains more than a dash of farce. Though serious in content, The Wonga Coup, a book published last week on the same events, has a cover resembling a blockbuster movie poster.

What the saga also reveals, however, is breathtaking greed, arrogance and stupidity - demonstrated by the conspirators' woeful indiscretion - coupled with racist and colonialist attitudes which would have seemed outdated when John Buchan was alive. To say there are no heroes in this story is an understatement.

When Mann was arrested at Harare airport in March 2004, along with a truckload of arms and more than 60 alleged mercenaries who had just arrived from South Africa by plane, some thought it was a plot to overthrow Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean leader. The footsoldiers arrested along with Mann said they had been hired to guard a diamond mine in the lawless Democratic Republic of Congo. The next day, however, Du Toit was held in Equatorial Guinea, along with six other South Africans, a German and six Armenian aircrew of two planes he had chartered. They were thrown into Malabo's notorious Black Beach jail, where within days the German detainee was dead.

In statements subsequently used against them in court, Du Toit and Mann confessed that the aim had been to overthrow the despotic president of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, and install an exiled opposition politician, Severo Moto, in his place. The plotters aimed to gain control of Africa's third-largest oil producer.

The chief sponsor of the coup, said Mann, was Ely Calil, a Lebanese-born, British-based, oil trader. Mr Calil denied any involvement. So did his friend, the disgraced former Tory chairman Lord Archer, who said he was not the "JH Archer" who paid nearly $130,000 into one of Mann's bank accounts just before the abortive coup. But at this stage, interest was focused mainly on Mann himself.

Why would an Old Etonian who had made a fortune in Angola with Executive Outcomes, the prototype of the military companies now so active in places like Iraq, get involved in such a hare-brained venture? For the thrills and the chance of a huge profit, it seems. Never mind if people got killed.

Du Toit and his associates were on trial for their lives in Equatorial Guinea, but the story went global only in August 2003 when it emerged that an intercepted note from Mann urged that "Scratcher" should be contacted for funds. Although Sir Mark denied being "Scratcher", he was arrested and charged with complicity. He was released after his mother stood bail.

A few days later I was in Malabo, watching the hapless Du Toit and his co-accused shuffling into court for what many expected to be a death sentence. But plans had changed; in the midst of the legal arguments in Spanish, the name of "Mark Thatcher" could frequently be heard, and the case was adjourned indefinitely while efforts to extradite the ex-prime minister's son went ahead.

Cut to Cape Town that November, where I watched Sir Mark appearing in three different courts on three successive days as he sought to fight off multiple legal assaults. He cut a slightly forlorn figure: his passport had been impounded, his American wife, Diane, had gone home to Texas with the children (they are now divorced), and people far more deeply implicated in the plot were cutting deals to testify against him. He finally cracked in January 2004, admitting that when he financed the lease of a helicopter, he had reason to suspect it might be used in a coup. He was given a suspended sentence, a fine of $500,000 and his passport back, and left South Africa the same day.

And today? As a convicted felon, Sir Mark is barred from the US and earlier this year was asked to leave Monaco. He can expect no sympathy from Du Toit, whose best hope is to be allowed to complete his sentence in South Africa: Equatorial Guinea has given amnesties to several jailed with him.

Mann, whose fellow convicts have all been released on completing their sentences in Zimbabwe, is due to be freed in 2008. He could face charges under anti-mercenary laws in South Africa, where he also has citizenship, but would hope to be allowed to return to Britain. His worst fear is that he might be traded to Equatorial Guinea for the oil supplies Mr Mugabe needs so desperately.

"You tried to play chess in Africa and ignore the black pieces," Mann is told by a fictional interrogator in Coup! But even some of his released co-conspirators are quoted in The Wonga Coup as saying they would follow him in another adventure, just for the thrills. Some people, it seems, just never learn.

'Coup!', BBC2 Friday 30 June, 9pm. 'The Wonga Coup' by Adam Roberts, Profile Books, £9.99