Mark Thatcher, the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, has married again in a secret ceremony in Gibraltar, according to a London Sunday newspaper.
Thatcher (54) married Sarah Russell (42) after a three-year courtship, the Sunday Telegraph reported.
The wedding came amid media reports that Equatorial Guinea is to seek Thatcher’s arrest on an international warrant, accusing him of being part of an attempted coup against the West African country.
Thatcher was quoted as saying that his mother was delighted at the news that he had remarried. He had not yet been able to reach his twin sister Carol, who was at sea on an ocean liner.
”Sarah and I knew from a very early stage that this was special and marriage had always seemed the inevitable outcome,” Thatcher said.
”We are both absolutely delighted that it’s now official. We were determined to keep the day for ourselves and only had three close friends at the ceremony and they kept it a secret for us.
”The last thing we had wanted to do was to have it turned into any kind of media event,” he said
Thatcher was divorced from his first wife, Diane, an American and the mother of his two children, last year after 18 years of marriage.
Thatcher has shrugged off Equatorial Guinea’s efforts to have him arrested.
”As far as I’m concerned the issue has already been dealt with,” he told the Daily Telegraph newspaper.
”I’ve been charged and tried in a court in South Africa on exactly those charges so I don’t see what more they can do.
”The term ‘double jeopardy’ springs to mind. I feel pretty relaxed about it.”
Thatcher has always denied plotting or knowingly financing the failed coup in 2004.
South African police arrested Thatcher that year on suspicion of bankrolling the scheme. He denied any links and eventually agreed a plea bargain deal with South African authorities.
Equatorial Guinea is holding Simon Mann, a 55-year-old British mercenary who has admitted that he plotted to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo but the plan failed. He faces a possible life sentence. – Reuters