/ 26 February 2008

Equatorial Guinea eyes quick trial for Mann

Simon Mann, the suspected British mastermind of a failed 2004 coup attempt in Equatorial Guinea, has yet to have any date set for his trial, the country’s defence minister said on Monday.

”There is no date fixed but, as we have already said, we want [the trial] to take place quickly,” Antonio Obama Ndong said after a meeting of regional defence ministers in Central Africa.

”He is in good shape. He is being held at the prison in Malabo, and he is being well treated — he says so himself … Sometimes he answers interrogators, sometimes not,” Obama Ndong added.

Mann, once an officer in Britain’s elite SAS special forces regiment, was secretly extradited from Zimbabwe, where he had first been arrested in 2004 with 61 alleged accomplices. — Sapa-AFP