Thatcher is the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. He could have faced a much more severe punishment: a five-year prison term followed by a four-year suspended sentence.

Mark Thatcher pleaded guilty to participating in the attempt by the exiled opposition from Equatorial Guinea to overthrow the West African government. He had agreed to pay $275,000 to help the coup-plotters charter an Alouette III helicopter. Thatcher had acted in conjunction with his business partner, Simon Mann, the owner of the company that was handling the charter of the helicopter. Mann is a former officer in the British Special Air Service (SAS), an elite unit of the British military.

Mann headed Executive Outcomes, a mercenary force with a record of defending British imperialist interests across Africa over the past decade. He left the army in the mid-1990s to establish mercenary operations, often referred to euphemistically as “security firms.”

In 1995 Mann’s mercenary group was responsible for defeating forces of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) in Sierra Leone and helping establish the more pro-imperialist regime of President Ahmad Tejah Kabbah. Mann is now serving a four-year prison term in Zimbabwe for his part in the Equatorial Guinea coup.

Thatcher’s lawyers said their client was “not charged with any involvement in the attempted coup d’etat in Equatorial Guinea. The plea bargain was entered into solely as a result of his financing of the charter of a helicopter in circumstances where he should have exercised more caution.”

Recent revelations have implicated the governments of both Britain and Spain in backing the failed coup attempt last March. The coup was aimed at overthrowing the government of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. At the time, Zimbabwean police in Harare impounded a plane that flew from South Africa with 64 mercenaries on board. A couple days later, an Equatorial Guinean minister announced that an advanced team of 15 coup plotters had been captured in Equatorial Guinea. The majority of those arrested were based in South Africa. The government of Equatorial Guinea has also accused Ely Calil, a London-based oil millionaire, and David Hart, a Tory party political advisor, of involvement in the coup. According to an article in the Guardian, Hart was Margaret Thatcher’s “chief enforcer during the (1984-5) miners’ strike,” and “handed out money to strike breakers from a suite in Claridges,” a hotel.

Lawyers for the government of Equatorial Guinea also want to question London businessman Greg Wales, Tory peer and novelist Jeffrey Archer, and EU commissioner Peter Mandelson. The lawyers said that “opportunities to invest in the plot were touted in the drawing rooms of London society.” Michael Ancram, the Tory foreign affairs spokesperson, questioned Prime Minister Anthony Blair and Foreign Secretary Jack Straw in Parliament, asking whether any ministers or officials have had discussions with Peter Mandelson about Equatorial Guinea in the past 12 months. The Tory attack is made in the wake of revelations by Straw that the Foreign Office has had knowledge of the coup plot for more than a year. In November 2004 Straw was forced to retract denials from two newspapers that he had no such intelligence information.

Equatorial Guinea is a former Spanish colony. Spain is now home to Severo Moto, head of the self-proclaimed government in exile. Miguel Mifuno, an advisor to Equatorial Guinea’s president, has charged Madrid with sending a warship with 500 marines that was due to arrive in Equatorial Guinea the day of the coup. The Spanish government has denied the allegations.

Equatorial Guinea has become Africa’s third-largest oil producer in the last decade, making it an important prize in the competition, especially between Washington and Paris, for influence in the region. Exxon is already exporting nearly 300,000 barrels of oil a day from there to the United States. Marathon is investing $3 billion in one of the world’s largest natural gas plants.

Growing U.S. intervention in Africa includes the “show of force” by a U.S. Navy battle group off the waters of Nigeria, São Tomé, Equatorial Guinea, and other African oil producing countries in mid-2004. U.S. officials said the foray was part of “Operation Summer Pulse ’04,” whose aim was to show the world that “even with all of its current responsibilities, [Washington] can still position half-a-dozen aircraft carriers with all the necessary support ships in the four corners of the world, at the same time.”  
 
 
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