The Sunday Times - Britain
September 19, 2004
MI6 chief’s nephew was partner of coup leader
Nicholas Rufford
A CLOSE relative of a former head of MI6 has emerged as having business links with Simon Mann, the former SAS officer involved in the plot to overthrow the head of an oil-rich African state.
Justin Longley, the nephew of Sir Richard Dearlove — chief of MI6 at the time the coup attempt was staged last March — was a friend and associate of Mann, the Eton-educated former soldier jailed for seven years in Zimbabwe last Friday.
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Longley was working closely with Mann on goldmining, forestry and engineering ventures in Africa. He visited the continent as a representative of Logo Logistics, the company through which Mann later financed the attempt in March to overthrow Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea. One mining venture in Sudan also involved Sir Mark Thatcher, who was arrested last month by South African police and accused of being among the backers of the coup.
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Documents seen by The Sunday Times show Longley — the son of Dearlove’s sister — and Mann were corresponding on ventures in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Gabon and Angola. Longley accompanied Mann on a trip to Sudan in December 2002 to inspect a mining and forestry area that could have yielded millions of pounds worth of gold and teak
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He worked with Mann at DiamondWorks, an Angola-based diamond mining enterprise, in the 1990s. The company had links through investors to Sandline International, the private military company that supplied arms to unseat a group of rebels who had seized power in Sierra Leone. The Foreign Office knew in advance of the operation.
Longley also worked as a manager for Oryx Natural Resources, the mining concern that had controversial links to Robert Mugabe, the president of Zimbabwe
Longley is said to have regarded Wales as a “spook” and described him to an acquaintance as a man with influential connections in Washington who “worked for the CIA and the commercial wing of the Republican party”.
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http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1268917,00.html
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