LONDON ¨C Margaret Thatcher approved of a failed attempt to use an army of mercenaries to overthrow the president of Equatorial Guinea, according to the unpublished memoirs of the chief protagonist of the bid ¡ª former SAS officer Simon Mann.
The former prime minister, whose son, Mark, was convicted in a South African court of involvement in the attempted 2004 coup, allegedly told Mann at a meeting at her Belgravia home, ¡°I¡¯m sure it¡¯s going to work.¡±
It is alleged that Thatcher likened the need for radical change in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea to the way London¡¯s Docklands had been redeveloped during the 1980s. She is also said to have encouraged Mann to talk to a group seeking to overthrow Venezuela¡¯s then-president, Hugo Chavez, with the words, ¡°We must always look after our friends, Simon . . . as I¡¯m sure you know.¡±
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