The Wonga Coup

by Adam Roberts

  The team in Mali, at least, made a wise choice. Moto took the news of his aborted trip well enough. ‘Moto was pissed off, but OK. He had thought this was the moment he’d long been waiting for …’ But in the middle of the night it still seemed possible to resurrect the plot one more time. Standing on the edge of the runway, they held a short and heated debate on what to do next. They gathered around a map, prodding at possible destinations. Steyl wanted to fly on to South Africa, perhaps going by Namibia. Moto and his aides preferred Europe, perhaps Malta. The men were irritable and hungry for sleep. Karim Fallaha also wanted to return to Europe. They chose what they knew best, the Canary Islands, a part of Spain. ‘At least we know it. We’ll get shit, but less shit to manage in Spain than elsewhere,’ recalls Steyl.

  Some aboard the King Air may not have realised it, but they came close to death soon after leaving Bamako. Steyl says the small plane rose into the darkness and told the control tower it was going to Sao Tome to the south. But with the lights off it turned and headed in the opposite direction, towards the Canaries. ‘And as we are taking off, voom, just above our heads, passes a 727.’ Africa has by far the worst air safety record in the world, in part because of reckless pilots like these. Steyl believes it was a commercial airliner also heading for the Canaries, and it passed within metres of the smaller craft. ‘Mid-air collisions over Africa, yeah, it wasn’t a good thing. But in extraordinary circumstances you have to do this.’

  They landed just before dawn at the larger airport on Gran Canaria, because the smaller airstrip, at Club Aeroport, has no lights. They were detained, locked in a basement interrogation room and told to wait three hours. The ‘tired and drunk’ staff at the airport were suspicious. Steyl had no passport and they noticed the plane had left the night before without a flight plan. But then a Spaniard in a crisp suit appeared. He spoke to Moto for fifteen minutes, then told everybody they were free to go.

  Back in Pretoria, Kershaw panicked. The project was in tatters, and he had no idea what to do. Distraught, he phoned his friend Morgan, who told him to get every document relevant to the coup, pack it into his car and race several hundred kilometres south to Morgan’s house. If Kershaw confessed all to the South Africans, he might avoid arrest. He drove through the night, reaching Morgan’s home at dawn.

  Johann Steyl – brother of Crause and Niel – was also disturbed in the middle of the night. Johann, yet another ex-pilot for Executive Outcomes, had known vaguely of the plot. Woken from his bed, he took a rushed call from Niel in Harare. Niel, now realising his plight, begged for a lawyer, just having time to add: ‘I am going to be in Harare for a long time.’ Johann called others in the family and said his brothers had been caught while ‘flying a mercenary force to somewhere in Africa to overthrow some incredibly bad dictator’.

  18

  Playa Negra Pedicure

  ‘In this game of crooks, who do you trust?’

  Jonathan Samukange

  By the morning of Monday 8 March the plot was over. But the misery of the plotters had just begun. Reaction to the coup attempt was fierce and furious in Malabo. Just as soldiers took to the streets in 1973 after the abandoned ‘dogs of war’ coup attempt, the mood darkened in 2004. Many innocent people were promptly rounded up. Equatorial Guinea draws large numbers of foreign workers – especially traders from Cameroon, Gabon, Ghana and Nigeria – to keep the economy moving. After the failed coup, many were intimidated and attacked. On 13 March Obiang said the coup plotters planned to turn ‘our city into a blood bath’. He told his people to suspect all outsiders and ordered ‘operation clean-up’ to expel illegal immigrants. Rich foreigners, notably South Africans who had the misfortune to be in Malabo at the time, were put under hotel arrest. Gangs of xenophobic youths threatened migrant workers in the street, demanding their papers. Many ordinary people were chased from the country. A senior official later told the ruling party’s newspaper, Ebano, that citizens should beware of foreigners and ‘commandos’, who ‘are more highly trained than an ordinary military officer … [and] were going to come into Equatorial Guinea under the effects of drugs, and so they were not going to have pity on anyone. Therefore, as Attorney General, I call on the population to be vigilant with foreigners, regardless of colour, because the target is the wealth of Equatorial Guinea, the oil.’

  For du Toit and the others, it was the start of ten miserable days. That Monday morning, at 8 a.m., a local business partner told du Toit to show himself at the central police station to ‘see about his passport’. He dutifully appeared and was pushed into a cell. Mark Schmidt, the youngest of du Toit’s team, shared a house with the Armenian pilots. Shortly after du Toit’s arrest, uniformed men surrounded their house and dragged away the Armenians. ‘I didn’t think anything about it. I thought that’s just the way they handle transport problems around here,’ he told a journalist later. But it was soon his turn. ‘Suddenly there was military everywhere. It was so scary. The soldiers were reeking of alcohol and they were threatening us with weapons. They threw me down and put a gun to my head. I thought I was going to die right there,’ said Schmidt.

  Heavily armed gangs of soldiers snatched six of du Toit’s team in Malabo (du Toit himself, Allerson, Boonzaier, Cardoso, Domingos, Schmidt), six Armenians, plus the German (Merz). Their hands cuffed tightly behind their backs, they were herded into a single cell in the dreaded Black Beach prison. The room was large, some 20 metres by 4 metres (60 feet by 12 feet), but 200 other foreigners – African traders rounded up from the streets – were already there. Allerson was pulled aside and thrown into solitary confinement. Police ransacked their homes in Malabo, stealing phones, money, televisions, music players and other goods. They found no weapons. That evening police on the mainland part of the country pulled two others – Abel Augusto and Americo Ribeiro – from their beds. Handcuffed, they were brought to Malabo, as officials stole their satellite phones, money and other property. Later several Equatorial Guineans were also grabbed.

  Abel Augusto describes conditions in Black Beach: ‘Some of the guys were crying, begging for them to loosen the cuffs. Every time you turned, even a little bit, the cuffs tightened more. They’d just say “Too tight?” Then they’d tighten it some more.’ For ten days they were beaten. Interrogation was the worst. While interrogators demanded answers they held a flame to the sole of a prisoner’s foot. Oddly, the foreign prisoners were given takeaway food in the first week in jail. ‘The food never tasted like anything because you were being beaten while eating,’ said Augusto. The men would crouch on the floor and eat without using their hands. ‘They’d say, “Eat!” So you eat and then, boom! They beat you, kick your plate over. Then they’d say, “Eat!” And it happens again and again,’ said Augusto. The men learned to do everything staring at the ground. Eye contact with guards was seen as defiance and punished immediately. ‘With your hands cuffed behind your back constantly, you can’t do most things. Not even use the toilet. I had to wipe Bones’s [Boonzaier] bum for him,’ one prisoner later told a South African journalist.

  Du Toit got most attention. Like the others, he had no lawyer and was not told why he had been arrested (he first heard the formal charges four months later on the radio). He thought he would be killed, either in jail by a guard, or at an execution. He was kept in solitary confinement much of the time, beaten and tortured. Interrogators from South Africa, Angola, Zimbabwe and Britain (Henry Page, acting for the Equatorial Guinean government) eventually interviewed him, again without lawyers being present. Various confessions were extracted. No prisoner could contact an embassy for help.

  A day after his arrest, du Toit was taken to the ministry of foreign affairs. There he confessed to the coup plot before an audience of diplomats and a set of television cameras. The footage was broadcast all over the world. Wearing a green shirt, he was clean-shaven, his hair dark and matted. He implicated Moto, telling the camera that the exile’s plane was due to arrive ‘half an hour after the people landed with the force from South Africa. They
will fly in Severo Moto and a new government from Spain. They will land here and then he will be here on the ground, then he can take over the government.’ He said he was freely confessing and had not been tortured. Later he told a lawyer that a gun was being pointed at him and he was being told what to say, on pain of death. Others suffered similar threats. Lawyers who later acted for the detained Armenians said they were told: ‘You are going to die. You are terrorists.’

  The Malabo Manicure

  Du Toit also implicated Mann and the others. The British lawyer working for the Equatorial Guinea government, Henry Page, though aware of the prisoners’ conditions and intimidation, soon compiled a pair of long and detailed confessions, dated 24 and 25 March, from du Toit, in which he admitted much of the coup plot. Equatorial Guinean interrogators collected their own confessions from the detained men, usually in Spanish. Du Toit later withdrew some of what he said, and changed his mind on many details. A visiting interrogator from Zimbabwe promised him that full co-operation would mean unconditional release, otherwise he and the rest would simply be killed. Amnesty International and other human rights groups later condemned the conditions. Du Toit’s wife Belinda told the Sunday Telegraph of the prisoners’ mistreatment. ‘For the first four weeks they were hit with sjamboks [whips made from leather hides], kicked and hit. One of the guards stamped on Nick’s foot so hard the toenail came off, and they forced handcuffs around his ankles even though they were too small and bit through the flesh …’ This abuse was eventually dubbed the ‘Malabo manicure’ by observers and came to symbolise conditions in Black Beach (though the ‘Playa Negra pedicure’ would have been more accurate).

  Eventually, du Toit was also put before a few foreign journalists to confess his guilt afresh. One, Barbara Jones, quoted the following admission from mid 2004: ‘My role was to secure the control tower and change the frequency on the tower radio to 120 MHz to establish communication directly with the incoming aircraft from Harare, Zimbabwe. Then I would drive with another man in the lead car, with the others driving behind us. Another man would be taking one of the groups to the military base near the Haladji hotel. Others would be at the two military bases on the Luba road waiting for us.’ According to Jones, other men were supposed to take the mercenaries to the house of Antonio Javier, the president’s special adviser, and kidnap him. He would show them where the president slept that night. ‘I wasn’t in it for the kicks. I wasn’t looking for anything but useful employment,’ du Toit said. Other versions of du Toit’s plan for the evening were published thick and fast. The official indictment later said he planned to attack the central police station, while Cardoso would attack the president’s palace.

  Either the torture was so bad that du Toit confessed falsely and in detail to the journalists. Or he was willing to spill the beans anyway, so the torture was inflicted as punishment. The worst beatings continued for ten days. One defendant wrote a graphic account on a cigarette packet that was smuggled from of Black Beach. It was dated 10 and 11 March, two days after the arrests. An Amnesty report later quoted it:

  10/3 22h00–23h00 I was taken to the police station for interrogation. I had no lawyer. I was asked many questions. I had no answers for them.

  1. Handcuffs tightened and cut into my flesh, into bone of right hand. In the office.

  2. I was beaten with the fist. I had no answers … Beaten on head and jaw.

  3. They took me to a small dark room down the stairs into the police courtyard. Here I was put on the ground. A dim light was burning. I saw Sergio Cardoso hanging, face down, in the air with a pole through his arms and legs. The police guard started asking questions which I still could not answer. Every question a guard would stand on my shin bone, grinding the skin and flesh of the right leg with the military boots. This carried on for at least 30 minutes. I was shouting, begging them to stop.

  4. Later I begged them rather shoot me for I could not take the pain and agony anymore … After no answers it stopped. I was taken back at 2 o’clock …

  6. 11/3 about 15h00 I was tied to a bed with cuffs on my right hand. I was beaten and slapped … my right thumb broke.

  7. At my bed … I was beaten with a blow unconscious.

  8. The same afternoon I was burnt with a lighter.

  9. At 17h00 I was taken to the police station and told to write everything I knew. Anything that came to my mind. I will have the same and worse treatment of the previous evening. I was terrified and wrote down as if I was involved in everything (which I was not) because they were to torture me again.

  10. About six weeks later I had septicaemia … pus was running out of my wound … my ankle was heavily swollen of the infection …

  They Must be Killed, the Devils

  If Obiang did slip out of Equatorial Guinea at the time of the coup attempt, he was soon back and rubbing his hands with delight. He launched into a speech, roughly a week after the arrests, making it clear what du Toit and the others could expect. ‘The terrorists, who have been arrested, will go through a fair trial,’ he claimed, but if ‘the actions towards us are judged as dreadful, the laws of Equatorial Guinea will determine how to punish them; if they have to be killed, they will be killed. Because Equatorial Guinea has not abolished the death penalty, we won’t forgive them. If we have to kill them, we will kill them. If we have to give them life in prison, they will stay in jail for the rest of their lives in Equatorial Guinea, so this serves as an example and a lesson to others who try to do the same.’

  But his belief in the rule of law was not convincing. He also told his countrymen to look out for others who may try a plot:

  … we have to eliminate these terrorists, we have to kill them without the need of taking them to justice. Nobody will ask us if they are killed in the act because they have come with bad intentions … I have been informed that there are others who are preparing themselves. Now that we know, they will not be detained, they will be killed immediately … Starting right now, whoever presents themselves as a mercenary, there will be no need to come let the President know, they must be liquidated, they must be killed because they are the devils.

  A few days later it became clear what treatment mercenaries could expect. By 17 March, Saint Patrick’s Day, the men had endured ten days of ill treatment and most were crammed together in one cell. That day Gerhard Merz, the German arms trader and aviation contractor, was dragged out for interrogation. There are various versions of what happened next. Prison officials said Merz suffered an unusually quick attack of cerebral malaria. Johann Smith said the arrested men were ‘manhandled’, ‘as you would expect’, and Merz, overweight with a bad heart, could not cope. Smith thought him ‘a heart attack waiting to happen’. Fellow prisoners later said Merz died in front of them, in the cell, after torture. Abel Augusto said Merz enraged the interrogators. ‘When they hit him, he never said a word.’ This provoked more severe battering. ‘After one beating he started speaking in German, which he never did before’. Dumped back in the cell, he was in wretched shape. Fellow prisoners called for medical help but were ignored. He collapsed, apparently from a massive heart attack. ‘We watched him die. We were waiting for our time also,’ Augusto said later.

  Amnesty later reported that Merz ‘collapsed in the cell. The other detainees called the guards, who reportedly dragged him into the bathroom and poured water on him, apparently to revive him. He was then taken to hospital but he was already dead on arrival.’ No autopsy was done and the body was only released three months later, in June, to German authorities. A German official saw Merz’s body the day after his death and noted marks around the wrist and ankles (from cuffs) and bruises on the torso, apparently made during the resuscitation efforts. The official could not examine the entire body. When an autopsy was finally done in Germany, it was found Merz had not died of malaria.

  But nobody much cared that Merz was dead. Germany has no embassy in Equatorial Guinea, and few – human rights groups aside – bothered to protest at the murder of a man named by the U
nited States as a suspected trader in chemical weapons. The death sent out a powerful warning, though, both in Equatorial Guinea and in Zimbabwe. Those in Black Beach decided to co-operate fully, desperate to avoid the same fate.

  19

  Send Me a Splodge

  ‘It may be that getting us out comes down to a large splodge of wonga!’

  Letter from Simon Mann

  The men arrested in Zimbabwe fared a little better. Most were bundled off together that night and taken to a maximum security prison, Chikurubi, outside Harare. Niel Steyl was thrown alone into a bare police holding cell. No inmate is supposed to spend more than twenty-four hours in one of those. He was there for a week. ‘I had to bribe a policeman with US$100 for drinking water and so I could get access to my phone. I called my family and my girlfriend,’ he said later. One text message he sent to his mother read: ‘I am well, I am strong, I will survive. I love you.’ His initial hope for a hotel turned into prolonged fear of death. Zimbabwe’s foreign minister, Stan Mudenge, said he hoped to hang the foreign ‘terrorists’.

  By Tuesday, two days after his arrest, Mann had drafted and signed a handwritten statement, confessing in detail and giving information on others. He had no lawyer present and the confession was never used in court in Zimbabwe. He later retracted it, saying he was ‘brutally and severely tortured and assaulted for several days’, adding that others ‘dictated to me what I should write and at every instance that I objected I was subjected to further torture and assaults. The police then typed the handwritten statement which was brought to my cell and which I was forced to sign … I wish to make it quite clear that the version of events described in the statement is substantially untrue.’ But Mann’s lawyers are reluctant to discuss details of his torture, and a copy of the long and detailed statement in Mann’s handwriting does not show any obvious signs of the author’s distress. However, the SAS man was certainly threatened. ‘I was taken to the airport and shown an aeroplane; I was told that it was ready to take me to Equatorial Guinea unless I did exactly what I was told.’