Free Republic

THE FAILED coup attempt involving Sir Mark Thatcher was to have made Equatorial Guinea a private colony run for the benefit of the British plotters, leaked documents reveal. The papers, passed to The Sunday Times by South African intelligence sources, reveal that the plotters had created a trading company to control the oil-rich West African state. The Bight of Benin Company (BBC), named after the bay on the state’s coastline, was to have grabbed control of the country’s economy, its oil reserves, army and police. The company would have controlled the country as a private fiefdom, modelled on the...

MADRID, April 20 (Reuters) - Exiled Equatorial Guinean politician Severo Moto, who lives in Spain, has disappeared and Spanish authorities are concerned he may have been killed, Spanish newspaper El Pais reported on Wednesday. Moto is the leader of a self-styled government in exile and a sworn enemy of Equatorial Guinea's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has accused Moto of being behind a coup attempt in the tiny central African country last year. El Pais and another newspaper, El Mundo, both reported Moto had travelled from Spain to Croatia twice in March, and that since his second trip...

Troubles deepened for Lady Thatcher's disgraced son last night when a self-confessed coup plotter surfaced to accuse him of direct involvement in the attempt to overthrow the regime in Equatorial Guinea. Crause Steyl, the mercenary pilot who was to have been the star witness against Mark Thatcher had his trial in South Africa gone ahead, told Channel 4 News that Sir Mark's role had been kept secret, because "his mother was the previous prime minister of England". Mr Steyl described meeting Sir Mark to select a helicopter on which a gun could be mounted. He also alleged that the Spanish...