Briton deported from Zimbabwe

By Cris Chinaka

HARARE (Reuters) - A former British special forces officer, who has been in prison in Zimbabwe, was deported to Equatorial Guinea to face coup plot charges soon after losing a legal appeal against extradition, his lawyer said on Friday.

Simon Mann was jailed in 2004 after conviction on charges of seeking weapons without a licence as part of a plot against Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo.

Mann, 55, was briefly released after serving his sentence in May last year but was again arrested on an immigration warrant while awaiting deportation.

His lawyer, Jonathan Samkange, told journalists that immigration authorities had deported Mann on Wednesday night, soon after the Zimbabwe High Court rejected arguments that he should not be extradited because he might be tortured over the coup charges in Equatorial Guinea.

Samkange, who filed an appeal on Thursday at the Supreme Court against the High Court decision, said he had only discovered later in the day that Mann may have been deported.

"They deported him at night late on Wednesday. There are (state) affidavits to that effect," he told journalists.

"The idea was that by the time we file a notice of appeal he would have gone," Samkange said.

"We are going back to courts to ask that he should be brought back here because the state knew that we were appealing to the Supreme Court against the High Court ruling," he said.