:00:02. > :00:12.attack on Friday. More news later but right now it is time for hard
:00:12. > :00:16.
:00:16. > :00:21.will. -- Hard Talk. It remains one of the most lucrative businesses in
:00:21. > :00:26.Africa - mercenaries fighting and killing for profit. Efforts to
:00:26. > :00:30.eliminate the soldiers of fortune has consistently failed. Like
:00:30. > :00:40.yesterday, Simon and, made millions of dollars fighting other people's
:00:40. > :00:44.wars in Africa. -- Simon Mann. His luck ran out in equatorial Guinea.
:00:44. > :00:54.Seven years and plenty of prison time later he is a free man with a
:00:54. > :01:13.
:01:13. > :01:23.gripping story. But how Clee is his Simon Mann, were open to huddle. I
:01:23. > :01:29.want to begin with the young Simon Mann. -- will come too HARDtalk.
:01:29. > :01:38.You were building a successful military career. He had made it
:01:38. > :01:45.into the SAS. The new chose to quit. Why? I did not fancy being a career
:01:45. > :01:50.soldier. Trying to become a general. It is quite hard, extremely
:01:50. > :01:54.competitive, not very financially rewarding. I've always felt the
:01:54. > :02:02.enjoyable part of soldiering was soldiering, at being out there,
:02:02. > :02:06.rather than pushing a desk. So you like the fighting and you liked
:02:07. > :02:12.money but you did not necessarily like everything else about the
:02:12. > :02:20.Army? You will not make money as a soldier in the British Army. Not
:02:20. > :02:30.serious money. As for the fighting, Northern Ireland was a kind of
:02:30. > :02:31.
:02:31. > :02:38.fighting, a pretty nasty and boring to be frank. What you did them, he
:02:38. > :02:41.crossed a very important line. You decide to go in to make his this
:02:41. > :02:46.where you would be in conflicts, you would be fighting, had been
:02:46. > :02:54.weapons, but not for Queen and country but for profit. Did you
:02:55. > :03:00.realise you were crossing a very important one Kuala off course. In
:03:00. > :03:10.fact, I have joined and left the British Army three times, which in
:03:10. > :03:11.
:03:11. > :03:15.this day and age is quite unusual. After working in the computer
:03:15. > :03:22.industry, I then rejoin the British Army for the third and last time. I
:03:22. > :03:32.found myself on the staff of the general in command of the British
:03:32. > :03:42.forces in the first goal for. -- first goal for. But after that new
:03:42. > :03:46.
:03:46. > :03:53.then crossed the line. -- First Gulf War. I was put a cross that
:03:53. > :04:01.line by events. I enjoyed my friend's small oil company. We were
:04:01. > :04:10.three men with one project. That one project was in Angola. I am
:04:10. > :04:18.talking about 1992. There were elections in Angola as a result of
:04:18. > :04:27.the Crocker plan to bring an end to the proxy war in Angola. It was
:04:27. > :04:32.complicated. But one party went back to war illegally after losing
:04:32. > :04:39.the election. They then attacked our company. They attack my
:04:39. > :04:45.livelihood. They attacked down men and captured our equipment in an
:04:45. > :04:49.operating base on the Southpoint mouth of the river Congo. And then
:04:49. > :04:56.you decided to become a private security force, a nurse and retain.
:04:56. > :05:01.You decide it you would organise and intervention for profit stop
:05:01. > :05:07.Bella how it took place was our equipment and company having been
:05:07. > :05:14.attacked, I suggested to Tony Buckingham that we could fight back,
:05:14. > :05:20.rather than simply be trampled on by people doing something criminal.
:05:20. > :05:25.Bear in mind, the election had been recognised as free and fair by the
:05:25. > :05:32.United Nations. But who exactly gave you the right to believe that
:05:32. > :05:36.you could go to a golf with a bunch of fighters, privately Hyde,
:05:36. > :05:43.heavily armed, and contemplate taking a life in a conflict there
:05:43. > :05:48.was nothing to do with you? It did not feel that way to me. It felt
:05:48. > :05:53.like it had a lot to do with me because I would lose my job.
:05:53. > :05:57.Nonetheless, you were not a member of the Angolan government. You had
:05:57. > :06:02.no role to play in an armed conflict about the future of
:06:02. > :06:06.Angola's stop you there are quite right. We went to the Angolan
:06:06. > :06:12.government and asked them to pay ours to retake the oil operating
:06:12. > :06:21.base in question. They thought about it pretty briefly. They were
:06:21. > :06:25.losing the war. They said yes. were a gun to hire. You said you
:06:25. > :06:33.had no confidence the Government was any better than the rebels.
:06:33. > :06:37.Human rights abuses. You wanted to make a profit and defend your
:06:37. > :06:43.business. We don't know that. We have not seen them in action as a
:06:43. > :06:49.government. Possibly they may have been much worse. It was none of
:06:49. > :06:53.your business anyway. The real moral question is that here in yen-
:06:53. > :06:58.dollar you decided to find the most potent weapons you could to play a
:06:58. > :07:04.role in this conflict. You went to the Russians and tried to persuade
:07:05. > :07:09.them to give you special fuel-air next bombs. Angola's had never seen
:07:09. > :07:14.anything like this before you actually kiss -- succeeded. Did you
:07:14. > :07:18.ever considered the Fazul wives they could have been lost as a
:07:18. > :07:24.result of the armaments you were provided with. Certainly, long and
:07:24. > :07:27.hard. You did not worry that given your for lack of knowledge about
:07:27. > :07:37.how they would be used, you could be responsible for thousands of
:07:37. > :07:42.dead. Of ID have close knowledge actually of what was going on. -- I
:07:42. > :07:48.did have. You were part of -- we were part of the Angolan Armed
:07:48. > :07:53.forces. I was a Brigadier with a uniform. You are saying that with a
:07:53. > :07:58.smile. It was a fig-leaf. No, it was deliberate. All the south
:07:58. > :08:08.African soldiers with me took a position in the Angolan owned
:08:08. > :08:10.
:08:10. > :08:16.forces. -- armed forces. It was a technicality. An important
:08:16. > :08:20.technicalities. You were supplying these powerful bombs and confessed
:08:20. > :08:23.he did not know how they would be used and you simply prayed they
:08:23. > :08:28.would not be used against civilian targets and killed thousands of
:08:28. > :08:32.people. That is absolutely right but I had good grounds to believe
:08:32. > :08:36.my prayers would be answered, because by that stage we had been
:08:36. > :08:41.working with fear and violence for a long time. I had every reason to
:08:41. > :08:46.believe they would use them responsibly, as indeed they did.
:08:46. > :08:52.Returning to the motivation of money. We now fast-forward through
:08:52. > :09:01.a career involved in private security throughout Africa and get
:09:01. > :09:10.to the use 2003 and 20 of four. You became in often a plot to overthrow
:09:10. > :09:15.the President of equatorial Guinea. You said the Leeson knew had was
:09:15. > :09:22.based upon a supertanker full of petrol dollars there could be the
:09:22. > :09:26.result of your involvement in this particular country. Yes. The
:09:26. > :09:30.equatorial Guinea plot potential upside financially to me and
:09:30. > :09:40.everybody else involved was very great. Said the motivation was
:09:40. > :09:41.
:09:41. > :09:47.agreed? Partly. What else was it? Equatorial Guinea at that time, as
:09:47. > :09:55.far as we could tell, was an ongoing tyranny it, a very nasty
:09:55. > :10:03.when. There are many tyrannies in Africa, rank and on going. White
:10:03. > :10:11.shoes that one? I was invited into an operation against the one. I
:10:11. > :10:18.said I would join it. You could make a huge profit from it. Us that
:10:18. > :10:23.Miss. You had to make contact with the person who would be the
:10:23. > :10:30.figurehead leader of they knew government. Given that you insist
:10:30. > :10:35.you had the best interests of the equatorial Guinea people at heart,
:10:35. > :10:41.I wonder what reassurance you thought -- sort from the man who
:10:41. > :10:45.would be put in place as the new President, reassurances about his
:10:45. > :10:53.commitment to be a better leader for his country. I talked with him
:10:53. > :10:56.at length. My feeling was that he was a very reasonable guys stop
:10:56. > :11:03.what I have read your account of the meeting. You spend a lot of
:11:03. > :11:08.time discussing how he would be transported from his exile into the
:11:08. > :11:13.city and how he would stay close to you. There is no record of be
:11:13. > :11:19.discussing his commitment to reform of the judiciary, development of a
:11:19. > :11:25.civil society, human-rights, fixing the prisons, none of that stock
:11:25. > :11:31.Wheeler those things were all discussed. Did he give you written
:11:31. > :11:36.assurances? Who were you to decide he was fit and proper to lead a
:11:36. > :11:40.country. Probably not the best person but it was up to me to make
:11:40. > :11:47.that judgment, because if I did not join the care I would not have been
:11:47. > :11:55.part of it. I had to make a decision - made joined the coup.
:11:55. > :12:04.you were playing got? Note, because they would have hired someone else.
:12:04. > :12:11.They? I refer to the boss, because of legal reasons I cannot name him.
:12:11. > :12:17.But he was the guy who invited me to join the coup. Had I said no, he
:12:17. > :12:22.would simply look for the next person down on his shopping this.
:12:22. > :12:29.What was the cut he was offering it? It was not done like that. He
:12:29. > :12:35.was offering me a good share of the long term development opportunities.
:12:35. > :12:43.This brings us back to the loads of pe pe. There was some
:12:43. > :12:49.hyperbole. He used it, facing this man who have decided you will help
:12:49. > :12:55.to be the next leader of a control Kinney. You are thinking of all the
:12:55. > :13:02.petrodollars. How seriously we considering his commitment to good
:13:02. > :13:09.governance? Very seriously. Our the long-term development as a Business
:13:09. > :13:15.and making money required for that this could be done properly. That
:13:15. > :13:19.includes the things are you are talking about thereafter. We cannot
:13:19. > :13:24.name this character of the boss. But you can name another backer of
:13:25. > :13:30.this coup, Mark Thatcher, because he has been tried and convicted in
:13:30. > :13:36.a court of involvement in the plot. How would you describe the moral
:13:36. > :13:43.standing of all the people who you were associating within this plot?
:13:43. > :13:49.They varied immensely. Some were only interested in the money. They
:13:49. > :13:56.made no bones about it. Others were very entered in the money but what
:13:56. > :14:00.of things to be done correctly. I had one chap with one of my men,
:14:00. > :14:05.one of the white South African mercenaries. We were saying, this
:14:05. > :14:12.is going to be very good for the people of equatorial Guinea and we
:14:12. > :14:19.hope it will be a bloodless coup. And he looked at me and said, yes,
:14:19. > :14:25.Simon, We Are the mercenaries, we do not care. He was honest. Are you
:14:25. > :14:29.doing on most? Were well, I am telling you that. Yes, but you also
:14:29. > :14:36.say you care about the good governance of equatorial Guinea.
:14:36. > :14:42.One example, in one early draft of the plant, you decided to use
:14:42. > :14:49.mercenary fighters who came from a group of former rebel fighters in
:14:49. > :14:54.Liberia. Their record is for atrocities and abuses. One of the
:14:54. > :15:03.most feared grooves in West Africa. You wanted to shift them into
:15:03. > :15:07.equatorial Guinea to be your They would not have been carrying
:15:07. > :15:12.out atrocities under our command. But their track records as they
:15:12. > :15:21.would not have been listening. would have been offers that by our
:15:21. > :15:26.own people. Why did you choose them? They were available and cheap.
:15:26. > :15:30.My associate was working with them at the time. Do you think it is a
:15:30. > :15:37.problem for people listening to this, for your credibility when you
:15:37. > :15:44.are so ready to work with people with such consistent abuse of human
:15:44. > :15:50.rights? You when into the jungle and met their leaders and offer
:15:50. > :16:00.them a lot of money. But they had been fighting a ghastly civil war
:16:00. > :16:01.
:16:01. > :16:05.in Liberia against Taylor, who also had committed atrocities. You are
:16:05. > :16:08.extrapolating the atrocities of Liberia to a completely different
:16:08. > :16:13.situation under different management. That would not have
:16:13. > :16:21.happened. But there is still the question of what business of yours
:16:21. > :16:29.was it, as a one-man from Britain in Africa, to be meddling in the
:16:29. > :16:34.affairs of countries like Equatorial Guinea or CEO -- co
:16:34. > :16:40.really don't. This strikes me as you using Africa as a playground --
:16:40. > :16:47.Sierra Leone. He on every occasion there is a black African asking for
:16:47. > :16:49.my involvement. So I come back to the question... We have so many
:16:49. > :16:54.different UN reports and international human rights groups
:16:54. > :17:00.saying mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, are contributing to the
:17:00. > :17:07.terrible conflict inside Africa. You seem to be a prime example of
:17:07. > :17:14.the problem. I am not sure I know of any instance weather is really
:17:14. > :17:19.true. Most errors are getting involved in conflicts in Africa
:17:19. > :17:24.Africa. -- mercenaries. Ba would those conflicts be worse without
:17:24. > :17:30.them? They were still be going on without them all with them. I have
:17:30. > :17:35.been involved in three major events. Angola, Equatorial Guinea, and Co
:17:35. > :17:43.the Leeanne. Each one of those I cared a great deal about -- CEO
:17:43. > :17:50.rarely UN. On each occasion I am on the invitation of a black African.
:17:50. > :17:59.The boss is not black but the guy who we put in there as the new
:17:59. > :18:09.President designates, is black. But -- but the man you were working for
:18:09. > :18:12.
:18:12. > :18:16.was not black. He was going to pay me the money? The boss. He does not
:18:16. > :18:22.have that kind of money. He is certainly not going to give it to
:18:22. > :18:27.me. My payments were through a different man. If I had been
:18:27. > :18:33.successful and he was elected, a supposed that ties with your claim
:18:33. > :18:39.that what you hoped would happen was that you would be able to go to
:18:39. > :18:44.Equatorial Guinea and be the powers behind the throne of a democracy in
:18:44. > :18:52.which you could pull the strings. That was the idea. The idea of it
:18:53. > :18:59.being a democracy was just a chance for you and your colleagues to
:18:59. > :19:08.break of the profits. No. Even the boss, a fairly fruitless character,
:19:08. > :19:18.said the one thing we were not going to do -- roofless, is cherry-
:19:18. > :19:28.
:19:28. > :19:34.pick the oil industry. -- ruthless. In 2004 it went very wrong and you
:19:34. > :19:40.were arrested. I was actually kidnapped. There was no extradition.
:19:41. > :19:49.Let's say you were transported... Smuggle... You sat in prison and
:19:49. > :19:54.were finally released. In those five years of misery did you think
:19:54. > :19:58.to yourself, I have made a terrible mistake. I have compromise myself
:19:58. > :20:03.and my morality. I have done nothing for Africa in the business
:20:03. > :20:09.I have conducted over the last decade and a half in this continent.
:20:09. > :20:16.I never felt that. It was clear I had made a mistake because I was in
:20:16. > :20:24.prison. I had got things terribly wrong in Equatorial Guinea. By
:20:24. > :20:32.looking at conscience and writing much of the book, I've roads a loss
:20:32. > :20:37.of that book in prison in Zimbabwe. -- I wrote a lot. I played back to
:20:37. > :20:44.myself all the events and had no problems with my conscience at all.
:20:44. > :20:51.If you were a series about trying to do good in Africa do you think
:20:51. > :20:56.the best thing was to deliver fighters, weaponry, some of the
:20:56. > :21:06.most lethal bombs the country had ever seen, into the hands of men
:21:06. > :21:08.
:21:08. > :21:13.pursuing conflicts? If we can talk about the bombs. We have spoken
:21:13. > :21:21.about and go there and the bombs in detail. But those bombs were
:21:21. > :21:26.extremely dangerous. We took in 20. It was a sovereign state deal. It
:21:26. > :21:32.was the Angolan government buying from the Russian government. Only
:21:32. > :21:42.one of those bombs was dropped. There was dropped as a demonstrator.
:21:42. > :21:49.Nobody was killed. You need to - man we were told the time and the
:21:49. > :21:55.close. Is this a lesson at this mercenary trade should continue? Is
:21:55. > :22:01.it good for Africa? War is terrible. Ah I am someone that has managed to
:22:01. > :22:07.help bring an end to it. Let's talk about your relationship with the
:22:07. > :22:12.President. He described him as ruthless, bloodthirsty and brutal.
:22:12. > :22:17.Since he was released from prison it you seem to be doing some
:22:17. > :22:21.consultancy work for him. That is not true. I rose security paper for
:22:21. > :22:27.him while I was in prison. For his government. Yes. I was happy to do
:22:28. > :22:33.that. Subsequent to that I have been to Africa three times. I have
:22:33. > :22:38.met the President. I have thanked him for what he did. From
:22:38. > :22:48.Equatorial Guinea I have flown to their roots, where I gave evidence
:22:48. > :22:54.
:22:54. > :22:59.as a witness -- Bay route, on a case. You now say the President is
:22:59. > :23:03.not so bad and has improved his act. You say the situation in Equatorial
:23:03. > :23:07.Guinea is better. I have been checking with different human
:23:07. > :23:14.rights groups who say that by now, in Equatorial Guinea, the situation
:23:14. > :23:18.is terrible. The abuses, torture, detention, are still being used.
:23:18. > :23:26.cannot say from first-hand whether that is true or not. I thought you
:23:26. > :23:33.were arguing that actually 10 York intervention had improved the
:23:33. > :23:38.situation -- your while up intervention. It may have not been
:23:38. > :23:43.but mice impression was that it had. We are nearly at the end. You are a
:23:43. > :23:51.free man out. You can do what everyone. The wants to continue in
:23:51. > :23:59.private security? -- do you want? But private security and mercenary
:23:59. > :24:06.are both very different. I have never been going around flocking
:24:06. > :24:13.the idea... Can you hire ask, of let's have a war. That has ever
:24:13. > :24:19.been my position. I got involved in the Angolan war and got invited by