{"id":6087,"date":"2011-12-14T00:14:48","date_gmt":"2011-12-13T22:14:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/12\/feature-british-mercenary-details-failed-coup-in-book\/"},"modified":"2011-12-14T00:14:48","modified_gmt":"2011-12-13T22:14:48","slug":"feature-british-mercenary-details-failed-coup-in-book","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/feature-british-mercenary-details-failed-coup-in-book\/","title":{"rendered":"FEATURE-British mercenary details failed coup in book"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>\t\t<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>By Ed Stoddard<span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"articleLocation\">JOHANNESBURG<\/span> Dec 13 (Reuters) &#8211; British mercenary<br \/>\nSimon Mann may be one of the luckiest foiled coup plotters in<br \/>\nhistory.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The soldier of fortune expected to spend the rest of his<br \/>\ndays rotting in a tropical dungeon for his role in an attempted<br \/>\nAfrican putsch in 2004 that went horribly awry.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Two years after he got an improbable pardon from Equatorial<br \/>\nGuinea&#8217;s strongman President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo for<br \/>\nhis bid to overthrow him, Mann has returned to the oil-rich west<br \/>\nAfrican nation three times a free man.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Instead of the vast petro-dollars he expected, Mann wound up<br \/>\nspending over 5 years in grim prisons in Zimbabwe and Equatorial<br \/>\nGuinea, becoming a subject of both fascination and ridicule in<br \/>\nthe process.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>But he is now profiting from the fiasco with a book about<br \/>\nthe affair, &#8220;Cry Havoc,&#8221; in which he gives his side of a sordid<br \/>\ntale that involved Mark Thatcher, the son of the former British<br \/>\nprime minister, 69 desperadoes and an audacious plot.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I don&#8217;t fancy myself as a freedom fighter at all. But I<br \/>\nfelt at the time that the government was a very repressive one<br \/>\nand that therefore it was legitimate to try and do something<br \/>\nabout it,&#8221; Mann told Reuters in a phone interview.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The major factor for wanting to do the job was this very<br \/>\nsimple double-whammy. Here was this terrible tyrant as he seemed<br \/>\nat the time and with that the opportunity to make a lot of<br \/>\nmoney. And that&#8217;s why I wanted to do it,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Mann claims to have enjoyed military success as a mercenary<br \/>\nin the battled-scarred African states of Angola and Sierra Leone<br \/>\nby helping the governments there quell rebel movements.<br \/>\n\u00a0 <span class=\"label\"><strong>Continued&#8230;<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Ed Stoddard JOHANNESBURG Dec 13 (Reuters) &#8211; British mercenary Simon Mann may be one of the luckiest foiled coup plotters in history. The soldier of fortune expected to spend the rest of his days rotting in a tropical dungeon for his role in an attempted African putsch in 2004 that went horribly awry. Two [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[830,2370,183],"class_list":{"0":"post-6087","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-south-africa","7":"tag-news","8":"tag-reuters","9":"tag-south-africa-2","10":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6087"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6087\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6087"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6087"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6087"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}