'Mark Thatcher will be jailed for role in coup,' vows dictator

Sir Mark Thatcher was warned yesterday that he would be 'pursued to the ends of the earth' by authorities in Equatorial Guinea.

They vowed to put him behind bars for 30 years for his alleged role in a plot to seize control of the oil-rich African state.

President Teodoro Obiang, a dictator reputed to eat the brains of his opponents, has instructed officials to contact Interpol seeking an international arrest warrant for Sir Mark, 54.

"We are not going to let this drop," said Jose Obono, the country's attorney general, who is a close ally of the president.

"We will pursue him wherever he goes. He must face justice in this country, which he tried to take over, along with his fellow plotters."

Another government official added: "We will pursue him to the ends of the earth.

"We will do whatever we have to do to bring Mark Thatcher to justice here. Do not bet against us."

They claim fresh evidence has been presented against the son of former prime minister Lady Thatcher.

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This has apparently been supplied by Simon Mann, an old Etonian and former SAS officer who is being held in prison in Malabo, the capital of the former Spanish colony.

Mann, 55, who faces 30 years in jail for his role in organising the botched 2004 coup, has been spending up to ten hours a day supplying information to his captors in the hope that his sentence will reduced when he goes on trial next week. One official said he was "singing like a canary".

With financial backing from Sir Mark, a neighbour in an exclusive Cape Town suburb, Mann and 70 South African mercenaries plotted to overthrow Obiang, a member of West Africa's feared Fang tribe.

A scion of the Watney Brewing empire, and the son of a former England cricket captain, Mann was arrested in Zimbabwe as his aircraft stopped to pick up machine guns and rocket- propelled grenades en-route to Equatorial Guinea.

There, Mann and his mercenaries were supposed to meet up with an advance party on his payroll, who planned to kill Obiang and seize control of the country's oil.

Equatorial Guinea is the third biggest oil producer in Africa, with an income of £3billion a year.

But South African intelligence learned of the plot after Mann allegedly persuaded Sir Mark to pump money into the plan during a meeting in Cape Town.

Sir Mark, who was fined by South Africa for providing 'financial assistance' to the plotters, has always denied any wrongdoing.

He says he thought he was helping fund an air ambulance for impoverished parts of Africa.

But Equatorial Guinea claims that new documents show Thatcher placed money in the bank account of a pilot who was hired to fly in a "puppet leader" waiting in the Canary Islands once Obiang's forces had been overwhelmed.

"Thatcher financed a coup whose intention was to topple, with violence, an entire system of government," said Mr Obono yesterday.

"That would mean a sentence of more than 30 years."

Sir Mark has lived in Gibraltar for more than two years.

Lord Bell, who acts as his unofficial spokesman, said in response to yesterday's remarks: "Mark would simply respond to this by saying he has made all the points with regard to this situation previously to the South African government."