The Zimbabwe Situation

IT HAS been compared to a Frederick Forsyth thriller, but the story of bungling mercenaries caught red-handed allegedly plotting a military coup in an oil-rich African state has more plot twists than even a master novelist could muster.

A group of 67 men led by former SAS soldier Simon Mann were arrested after their plane landed in Zimbabwe last Sunday. They face the death penalty if found guilty at a trial due to start this week.

But the mystery has now turned to the identity of those behind the coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, and in particular a Byzantine web of intrigue at the heart of the despotic government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

Documents obtained by Scotland on Sunday suggest that Obiang’s own brother is linked with the South African mercenary who has admitted his part in the putative coup plot.

Obiang, who came to power in a military coup by overthrowing his uncle, has ruled with an iron fist for 25 years by stuffing the government with his relatives and blatantly rigging elections.

But in recent months tensions have risen within his family over an apparent desire to hand power to his son Teodorin, a rap music entrepreneur and international playboy.

The 30-something has been seen at parties in Hollywood, Rio de Janerio and Paris, where he stays at five-star hotels and travels in Bentley and Lamborghini cars. He has his own rap label, TNO Productions, and has reportedly had a relationship with a female American gangster rapper.

Now company documents link Nick du Toit, the 48-year-old South African arrested as leader of an alleged "advance team" of mercenaries, with Armengol Ondo Nguema, the national security chief and brother of Obiang.

Both men are shareholders in Triple Options, a joint venture company established last October to provide "security services" to Obiang, but which the government now says is implicated in the plot to topple him.

The Zimbabwe mercenary team led by Mann have said that they were on their way to Eastern Congo to protect an unnamed mine as part of a legitimate contract.

"It is all a dreadful misunderstanding," said Charles Burrow, an executive with the Channel Islands-registered company that owns the mercenaries’ impounded Boeing 727 plane.

But respected sources say that in fact the mercenaries stopped in Harare to pick up weapons. They had already paid $180,000 to Zimbabwean army officers for a consignment of AK-47 guns, mortars and 30,000 rounds of ammunition. But when they landed there were no guns and no army officers, just the Zimbabwean authorities, who duly arrested them.

The mercenaries are accused of acting like characters from the Forsyth novel, The Dogs of War, a thriller about a mining executive who hires a group of mercenaries to overthrow an African government and install a puppet dictator so he can mine platinum.

Nevertheless, the wide range of possible culprits highlights the universal unpopularity of Obiang’s regime.

"The list of people who want to see him overthrown is very long," said Antony Goldman of Clearwater Research Services, a London-based political risk constancy.

The stakes in Equatorial Guinea are also high for Western countries, and in particular the US.

Massive oil strikes in the late 1990s have shot the small, poor nation from obscurity to being Africa’s third largest oil producer, second only to Nigeria and Angola.

US oil giants, led by ExxonMobil, have invested over $6bn in operations that pump 350,000 barrels of oil per day and made Equatorial Guinea Africa’s fastest growing economy.

"The oil has been for us like the manna that the Jews ate in the desert," Obiang told CBS news last year.

But as in other oil-rich African nations, the vast revenues have only been salted into the foreign accounts of a rich elite and have served to entrench the ruling dictatorship.

Last year ExxonMobil threw a party in Washington in honour of Obiang - one year after he held presidential elections in which he won 97% of the vote.

The result appeared to reflect a slight decrease in popularity over the previous poll, in which Obiang won 99.2% of the vote.

Visa requirements have been waived for US citizens, and more than 3,000 US oil workers live on premises provided by the Obiang government. There are direct flights from Houston to the capital, Malabo. Most controversially, US firms have been depositing oil royalties into a Washington account with the Riggs Bank - which only Obiang controls.

According reports, his current balance is $600m, prompting the FBI to launch an investigation.

American interest in censuring human rights abuses has waned in tandem with the flood of investment. The US re-opened its embassy on the island capital Malabo last October after an eight-year closure in protest at torture and other abuses.

Two years ago, for instance, more than 150 political opponents were arrested for another allegedly coup plot. Some were hung in positions designed to break their bones, and at least two died.

Since then, those who have not fled into exile in Spain have been detained at the notorious Black Beach prison, where opponents say they have been tortured by Obiang family members.

"If you’ve ever seen a person limp on both legs, you know you’re in Equatorial Guinea," said former US ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, John Bennett.

The US is looking to West Africa as a safe source of oil far from the Muslim world and the price controls of Opec producing states. The region already supplies 15% of US imports, which the Bush administration hopes will rise to 25% in the coming decade.

Western business is also flooding into a country that just 15 years ago was a poverty-stricken, little-known backwater, even by African standards.

There was only one hotel with no electricity, food or running water. Two cars in the street was a traffic jam, and the phone directory had just two pages, which listed subscribers by their first name. The airport terminal was a tin-roofed shack that received just one international flight.

Today, however, the French have built a mobile phone network, sports utility vehicles whizz through the streets, and several international carriers service the smart new airport terminal. Prostitutes clamour around the gates of several new hotels.

And following the US lead, foreign diplomatic missions no longer insist on democratisation in their dealings with Obiang. The former colonial power, Spain, sent its foreign minister on a visit last November, and the South African president Thabo Mbeki has also strengthened relations.

Equitorial Guinea strikes it rich

UNTIL major oil discoveries in 1995 and 1999, Equatorial Guinea was one of Africa’s smallest, poorest and least known countries.

Tucked into a quiet corner of the West African coast between Gabon and Cameroon, the former Spanish colony, called Spanish Guinea, relied on cocoa exports as its principal source of income.

The country is split into two sections - a mainland area and the island of Bioko, where the capital Malobo is situated. The major languages are Spanish and French.

The first president, Francisco Nguema, brought brief notoriety in the 1970s when widespread human rights abuses caused one third of the population to flee.

President Nguema was overthrown in 1979 by his nephew, Obiang Nguema (right), who had him arrested and shot.

The first ever multiparty elections in 1996 were marred by widespread irregularities, returning President Obiang with 99% of the vote.

Since the discovery of Africa’s third largest oil reserves, Equatorial Guinea has become its fastest growing economy. However, the wealth has failed to trickle down to its 500,000 people, most of whom survive on $2 a day.