Privatise the business of deposing dictators

The news that the businessman Ely Calil vehemently denies having masterminded a violent coup to overthrow the dictator of Equatorial Guinea ought not to surprise us. It was an illegal action, as the coup leader Simon Mann has sadly found to his cost. It was also an operational disaster.

But there was something noble in attempting to rid the world of one of Africa's most brutal dictators and replace his regime with the opposition party.
   
After Obiang Nguema had his uncle Macias Nguema shot, he soon turned out to be almost as monstrous and paranoid a dictator as his predecessor. "The catalogue of murder and torture in his prisons, police stations and elsewhere is toe-curling," writes Adam Roberts [no relation], author of The Wonga Coup, an authoritative account of the attempted coup. "Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch frequently report on extrajudicial executions, torture and rape by police and soldiers."

In April 2005, a British judge described Obiang (left) as a "despot" who rules "without regard to the rule of law, or democratic institutions (such as free elections) and through a regime which uses torture to procure confessions". One of the other plotters of the 'Wonga Coup' besides Mann has already been tortured to death in President Obiang's notorious Black Beach prison, where Mann, too, has been imprisoned since his extradition from Zimbabwe.

Opposition political figures are regularly tortured and executed inside the jail. One political opponent, Pedro Motu, had his liver removed in 1993, and the suspicion is widespread that Obiang subsequently ate it. Another inmate had his hands whipped so badly he was unable to sign an (invented) confession. Jaws are broken, forearms are snapped in half, and outside the prison, rape is employed systematically to keep the minority Bubi tribe down.

Nor does Obiang only kill his own people. In July 2003 a young female Spanish missionary was shot dead in a bus by soldiers; soon afterwards a French economist bent on exposing corruption had the veins in his neck sliced open. What might happen to Mann (right) in the long term understandably makes his family and friends shudder.

Meanwhile, Obiang dumps toxic waste for profit on Annobon Island; his henchmen traffic in drugs through diplomatic bags; he has been accused of eating the testicles and occasionally the brains of his political opponents, and he is a man who in 2004 bought his sixth private plane - a Boeing 737 - for $55m, while his people have the smallest proportion of GDP spent on health and education of any country in Africa.

Anyone involved in attempting to overthrow this vicious monster should be protected by the British Government to the utmost of her ability, and lauded by the rest of us.

Which brings us to Robert Mugabe. With Britain, South Africa, the US, the African Union and the United Nations all absolutely ruling out an invasion of Zimbabwe - which is the only realistic way that his claws can be prised off the levers of power - surely it is time to look at the privatised option?

A mercenary operation removing Mugabe and his senior henchmen and putting Morgan Tsvangirai in his place could be clean, quick and universally popular among ordinary Zimbabweans. Further, it would have 100 per cent deniability by world governments and multi-national organisations. That is why mercenary coups in Africa are an idea whose time has come. ·