Lawyers for jailed Briton Simon Mann, the alleged mastermind of a foiled coup in Equatorial Guinea, have launched a bid to stop his extradition from Zimbabwe to the West African state.
”We have filed an appeal in the High Court,” his lawyer, Jonathan Samkange, said on Friday.
Harare magistrate Omega Mugumbate on Wednesday granted an application for Mann’s extradition to Equatorial Guinea to face charges of planning to oust that country’s long-serving ruler, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
Mann was to be freed from a Harare jail on Friday after serving three years for an arms offence under Zimbabwean law related to the alleged coup plot.
But he was released two days earlier in what Samkange described as ”mysterious circumstances”.
Samkange contends the magistrate erred in granting the extradition as documents submitted by Equatorial Guinea’s government, the applicant, were ”mainly inadmissible and irrelevant”.
”The learned magistrate erred in stating that the appellant should have proved that he would be tortured [in Equatorial Guinea]. The court failed to appreciate that [Mann] is only required to establish reasonable apprehension that he is likely to be tortured.”
Samkange said his client was likely to be tortured and that he would not have a fair trial in Malabo.
”The appellant prays that the … order to have Simon Francis Mann extradited to Equatorial Guinea be set aside and that the court orders that he be immediately and forthwith released from Chikurubi Maximum Security Prison and deported to England,” Samkange states in court papers.
A former member of Britain’s crack SAS troops, 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 Nguema, who has ruled the West African state 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.
Mann has been held at Chikurubi on the outskirts of Harare on an immigration warrant since completing his sentence on arms’ charges on Wednesday.
The High Court has yet to set a date for the appeal. — Sapa-AFP