HARARE (AFP) — The alleged British mastermind of a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea has been deported there from Zimbabwe, even though he was still appealing against his extradition, court documents showed on Friday.
Simon Mann, an ex-SAS officer was placed on a military plane and flown out in the early hours of Thursday after being handed over to Equatorial Guinea officials, a senior immigration officer said in an affadavit seen by AFP. He had already served time in a Zimbabwean jail.
But Mann's lawyer Jonathan Samkange said he had only learnt his client had already been flown out when he lodged legal papers on Friday relating to a final appeal against his deportation.
"The idea was that by the time we filed a notice of appeal he would have gone. This was designed to defeat the notice of our appeal," Samkange told AFP.
"Deporting a person at night is not only mischievous but unlawful."
Mann had lost a bid for freedom earlier this week when a high court judge upheld an earlier ruling by magistrates but he was still pinning his hopes on a final appeal before the supreme court.
The lawyer had turned up at court on Friday morning to file the appeal papers when he was shown documents confirming the deportation order had been already carried out at the behest of acting attorney general Bharat Patel. Patel was also one of the judges at the high court ruling.
Samkange said the authorities had deliberately concealed the fact Mann had been moved out of the Chikurubi maximum security prison, near Harare.
"I spoke to the officer in charge of Chikurubi last night and he assured me that he was there," said the lawyer.
An affadavit signed by principal immigration officer Evans Siziba and later lodged with the high court confirmed Mann had been flown out before dawn.
"On 31st January Thursday 2008 at about 0130 hours, I was informed by the police to process the extradition papers of Simon Mann as his appeal had been dismissed," Siziba wrote.
"I thereafter proceeded to collect the letter authorising the extradition of Simon Mann from the acting minister's (attorney general's) office and I was later accompanied by two police officers to collect Simon Mann" from prison.
Mann was then taken to the nearby Manyame air base and handed over to the Equatorial Guinea authorities who had a plane already waiting on the tarmac.
"They boarded an air force plane which took off about 0450 hours," said Siziba.
Mann's legal team applied on Friday for a court order for their client to be returned to Zimbabwe but the application was rejected by a high court judge.
"The application has been dismissed because Simon Mann was deported before the appeal was noted at the supreme court," Julia Woods, another of the Briton's lawyers, told AFP after the hearing.
An alumnus of Britain's famous Eton school, Mann was arrested with 61 others when their plane landed at Harare international airport in March 2004.
They were accused of stopping off to pick up weapons from Harare while on their way to Malabo to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled the oil-rich Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist since 1979.
Mann said he and his co-accused were on their way to the Democratic Republic of Congo and needed the weapons for a security contract at a mine.
He was sentenced to seven years in jail, but the term was later reduced. Most of his co-accused were released from a Zimbabwean prison in 2005.
The case made headlines worldwide following the arrest in Cape Town in August 2004 of Mark Thatcher, the multi-millionaire son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher on charges that he allegedly helped bankroll the abortive coup.
Thatcher pleaded guilty in South Africa to unwittingly helping finance the plot and was fined some 400,000 euros (510,000 dollars). He has since left the country.
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