The human rights organization Amnesty International describes incarceration in the prison as “a slow, lingering death sentence”. One political campaigner from the country, released in 2006 said bluntly. “Prisoners are tortured and just disappear and die. They weight their bodies with rocks and throw them in the sea. Their families never know what happened to them.”

Equatorial Guinea is run by the iron-fist of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who seized power in a coup in 1979. Human rights groups say Mr Obiang’s corrupt regime is one of the worst abusers of rights in Africa. His reputation is fierce and he is said to enjoy eating the brains and testicles of his political opponents.

This gruesome fate is unlikely to meet Black Beach’s most famous current inmate, the British mercenary Simon Mann, who had admitted to being central to an international plot in 2004 to overthrow the government of this oil-rich state. In his show trial this week, Mann pleaded guilty to being a member of a coup attempt to replace Mr Obiang with Severo Moto, an exiled opposition leader living in Spain.

It was back in March 2004 that Mann and 69 South African mercenaries were arrested at Harare airport with a plane load of arms en route to Equatorial Guinea. Mann, who is a soldier of fortune, was educated at Britain’s top private school, Eton and later joined the country’s most elite regiment, the SAS. He was sentenced to seven years imprisonment in Zimbabwe, which was subsequently reduced to four, although he was then transferred to Black Beach earlier this year.

The bespectacled Mann has consistently tried to underplay his importance in the coup with a view of getting a reduced sentence. His friends try and portray him as an “English gentleman”. One profile of Mann on the BBC last week, included the quote calling him a “humane man, but an adventurer… very English, a romantic, tremendously good company”.

Even his defence lawyer claimed last week that a “gentleman” who had collaborated with the court “out of a sincere desire to repair the damage done to our people”. But this “English gentleman” has also managed to get privileged treatment at prison, having his own his own cell, an exercise machine, books and magazines. He is allowed to make regular calls home and is said to lunch most days with the country’s Minister of Security, with special food and wine delivered to the prison.

The simple fact is that Mann collaborated with the Equatorial Guinean regime as he does not want to spend years rotting in an African jail. Mann has claimed that his collaboration is out of concern for the people of Equatorial Guinea. But the bottom line is that he is a hired killer who has made millions out of being a soldier of fortune in Africa and elsewhere.

In the early nineties he set up Executive Outcomes that made millions protecting oil installations from rebels in Angola. He then set up another company, Sandline International, which shipped arms to Sierra Leone in flagrant contravention of a UN embargo.

As part of his strategy to gain freedom, Mann has named what he called the main backers of the plot, who remain at large. Speaking in court, Mann alleged Ely Calil, the British-based secretive Lebanese tycoon, was known to the coup team as “the cardinal”. “Calil was very much the boss. So nothing could happen without Calil telling me yes or no,” Mann told the trial. Calil, who is reported to have invested more than $700,000 in the coup attempt, has always denied the allegations.

Another person named by Mann is Mark Thatcher, son of Britain’s ex-Prime Minister. Thatcher met Mann when they both lived in South Africa. Thatcher was arrested after the aborted coup, where he struck a plea bargain with the South African authorities, fined $450,000 and given a four-year suspended sentence for “unwittingly” investing in the plot.

A rather unflattering profile of Thatcher in the British press recently said he was “Famous for getting lost during the Paris-Dakar motor rally and making his mother cry in public, notorious for shamelessly exploiting her name to further dodgy business ventures, renowned for his rudeness, arrogance and pomposity, and no stranger to controversy, but none of his previous dubious escapades can compare with his reckless involvement in an ill-fated plot to oust the offal-loving president of Equatorial Guinea.”

Thatcher, like Mann, has always tried to downplay his involvement in the coup too. When Thatcher was arrested in South Africa, he said: “I have no involvement in any alleged coup in Equatorial Guinea and I reject totally all suggestions to the contrary.”

Giving evidence last week, Mann contradicted this by saying Thatcher was “not just an investor. He came on board completely and became part of the management team.” Leaked documents suggest Thatcher was involved, something the plotters wanted to keep quiet. One document, that looked at “threats”, was headed by the initials “MT”, which the South African police argue stood for March Thatcher. It said: “If involvement known, rest of us, and project, likely to be screwed as a side- issue to people screwing him. Would particularly add to a campaign, post-event, to remove us.”

Moreover, telephone records obtained by a private detective working for the government of Equatorial Guinea, show Mark Thatcher and Mann speaking “with increasing frequency” in the days before the coup.

Other documents uncovered by the South African security services show the extent to which the coup plotters were going to exploit the resources of Equatorial Guinea. The plotters actually set up a trading company after the coup, called the Bight of Benin Company (BBC). The company would have controlled the country’s economy, its oil reserves, army and police, as a “private fiefdom”, modeled on the British colonial company the East India Company.

The documents suggest that BBC was to have “sole right to have physical or other access” to the new president Moto. It would have been the only company that could “make agreements or contracts” with the new regime.

The plotters also knew about how they would have to spin their coup to the outside world. They planned a massive public relations exercise to avoid “unfavourable scrutiny”. Part of this campaign would have been to trick the outside world that the new regime would be “transparent” over its policies, including on human rights. However this “transparency” campaign was to be followed by one of “disinformation” to convince outsiders that the Americans were behind the coup, and therefore to “back off.”

“It is potentially a very lucrative game,” one document said: “We should expect bad behaviour; disloyalty; rampant individual greed; irrational behaviour (kids in toyshop type); back-stabbing … and similar ungentlemanly activities.”

The truth is that, despite how supporters are trying to spin this story, Mann is no gentleman. He is a soldier of war. Mark Thatcher is no gentleman either; his controversial business career in arms and oil has been linked with scandal. In the early eighties Thatcher was rumoured to have been paid a $2 million commission for the construction of a university in Oman, which had been negotiated by his mother, then Prime Minster. Three years later, he was said to have received $24 million from the biggest arms deal in history, the $80 billion Al-Yamamah deal with Saudi Arabia, also signed by his mother.

President Obiang’s government has now issued an international warrant for Thatcher, who the President calls a “dirty player who lives his life getting himself involved in all sorts of dubious deals that are of benefit to himself.” Thatcher remains in hiding in a secure gated resident in South Spain. He is said to be running out of places to hide: South Africa has evicted him, the US would arrest him, France and Switzerland have said he is not welcome.

If Thatcher is arrested, the chances of a fair trial in Equatorial Guinea are as remote as free and fair elections in Zimbabwe. But it is time the world really found out how the son of a British Prime Minister helped finance this dirty plot and his exact involvement.

Maybe Thatcher should volunteer to be tried in neutral country. If convicted though he should not be given any privileged treatment. Neither should Mann when he is sentenced. Both men were reportedly set to make millions from this venture. They both gambled and they lost.

As Mann has said, “You go tiger shooting and you don’t expect the tiger to win.” Well this time the tiger won. They can sit there together with their tails between their legs.

It was a photo opportunity that was meant to signal a new dawn for Afghanistan. In January 2006, then British Prime Minister Tony Blair hosted a conference for some 60 international delegates in London on the future of the country. Standing side by side with Tony Blair for the conference photo was US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, then UN head, Kofi Annan and Afghan President, Hamid Karzai. According to the US State Department, the conference “represented an historic milestone for the Afghan people and the international community” in which “Afghanistan sets its reconstruction and development priorities.”

The centerpiece of the conference was the endorsement of the “Afghanistan Compact”, which set out an ambitious programme for Afghan development, committing to specific and achievable goals in security, governance, economic and social development. The document also included an entire annex on “improving the effectiveness of aid”. At the conference, the international community pledged some $10 billion dollars in aid. For the photo, Karzai held a copy of the Compact proudly in his arms.

Now two years on a new report has shown that the Compact has been a complete failure and billions of aid money to the county has either been wasted or not even delivered. The report is published by the Agency Coordinating Body for Afghan Relief (ACBAR), which is a leading alliance of 94 national and international non-governmental organizations working in Afghanistan.

Its author Matt Waldman argues: “The reconstruction of Afghanistan requires a sustained and substantial commitment of aid — but donors have failed to meet their aid pledges to Afghanistan. Too much aid from rich countries is wasted, ineffective or uncoordinated.”

It seems the last two years of effort has been wasted. Even before the London conference in 2006, the politicians knew they had a problem with aid money. Despite the billions pouring into Afghanistan, there were already reports of wasted money, corruption and incompetence. Just two months before the London meeting, the Washington Post had run a high profile piece entitled: “A Rebuilding Plan Full of Cracks”.

The paper noted that in September 2002, the United States launched what would become an aggressive effort to build or refurbish as many as 1,000 schools and clinics by the end of 2004. However, Congressional figures showed that they managed to finish and hand back to the Afghan government only 40 schools by late 2005.

This story of failure was not unique. At the time, the World Bank director in Afghanistan Jean Mazurell estimated that between 35 to 40 percent of the aid was “badly spent”. “In Afghanistan the wastage of aid is sky-high: there is real looting going on, mainly by private enterprises. It is a scandal,” said Mazurell. “In 30 years of my career, I have never seen anything like it.”

Other stories of wasted money began to emerge. A 45 million contract with the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation to supply badly needed food for the country, included the proviso that four million dollars went to financing its headquarters in Rome.

The tragedy is that aid has often been ineffectual and wasted. Often it does not even leave the country it is being offered from, as it goes to the country’s own consultants. The fraud of aid never actually leaving rich countries has been known about for decades.

In the late eighties the British All-Party Parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee had noted bluntly: “In practice, the purpose of bilateral aid programmes in the UK, as in most countries, has rarely been viewed as the purely selfless promotion of other peoples’ welfare. It has always been understood that such programmes should be carried out with British commercial and industrial interests and political interests in mind.”

As Ben Jackson wrote in his book Poverty and the Planet published in 1990, “Aid is commonly thought of as handing over money to Third World governments for development. In fact, aid largely consists of funding from Western governments for services, machines, technical experts and consultants to be supplied by companies in rich countries, frequently their own.” The bottom line was that “most aid money is actually spent in the rich world.” Of the $20 billion the World Bank handed out in 1988, $15 billion went to its own contractors or consultants.

There are many more cases like this. Another book written around that time, called Lords of Poverty, examined the “freewheeling lifestyles, power, prestige and corruption of the multibillion dollar aid business.” It found, for example, that in the African country of Tanzania, “over 80 per cent of all Canadian development assistance was tied to the procurement of Canadian goods and services.”

Another problem that has been known about for years is that rich countries often promise aid, but never actually deliver it, or if they do, what they eventually give is woefully short of what they promised.

The record of failed promises is long. After Hurricane Mitch hit Central America in 1998 only a third of pledged aid was delivered; after the floods in Mozambique in 2000 and the earthquake in Bam in Iran just over half was delivered. After the Tsunami hit Asia in December 2004, Max Lawson, from the development charity Oxfam noted that: “History has shown us pledge-making is consistently undervalued by governments delivering about half of what they actually promised.”

Nearly two years after the Tsunami, Oxfam’s worries remain true. According to the UN, America promised Indonesia over $400m, but delivered $70m. For Sri Lanka, Spain promised $60m, but delivered less than $1m. France pledged $79m and came up with just over $1m. The Chinese promised $301m and delivered just $1m. In the Maldives, Kuwait promised $10m but actually delivered nothing.

So has Afghanistan been any different? The tragic answer is no. ACBAR’s report is truly shocking. The international community has simply repeated well known mistakes. Firstly, despite the pledge made in the “Compact” the reasons for giving the money have been dictated by the big donors rather than responding to Afghan needs.

According to ACBAR, the donation of aid has “been heavily influenced by the political and military objectives of donors, especially the imperative to win so called ‘hearts and minds’.” Given to reflect expectations in donor countries, it is not what Afghan communities want and need. A significant proportion of aid to Afghanistan is being used to achieve military or political objectives, rather than help Afghans on the ground.

For example, over 70% of the Afghan population rely either directly or indirectly on agriculture for their livelihoods. However agriculture has received only $400-500 million since 2001, a tiny fraction of the multi-billion international aid budget to Afghanistan.

Secondly, there is a huge disparity between what America spends on war and what the international community spends on aid. The US military currently spends nearly $36 billion a year in the country, some $100 million a day; yet the average volume of aid spending by all donors since 2001 is just $7 million per day. Whilst the military budget is vast, 2.5 million Afghans face severe food insecurity, and one in five children still dies before five. Life expectancy is woefully low at 45 years. Thirdly, over half of all aid to Afghanistan is tied, by which donors often require procurement of services or resources from their own countries. Rather than go to help Afghanistan, the money just lines the pockets of Western contractors and companies. So of the aid actually spent, a staggering 40% has returned to donor countries in corporate profits and consultant salaries.

The report notes: “Vast sums of aid are lost in corporate profits of contractors and sub-contractors, which can be as high as 50% on a single contract … A vast amount of aid is absorbed by high salaries, with generous allowances, and other costs of expatriates working for consulting firms and contractors — each of whom costs $250,000-$500,000 a year.” In contrast, an Afghan civil servant is paid less than $1000 per year.

Often the contractors spend vast amounts of money on something that could be done much cheaper: For example, a road between the centre of Kabul and the international airport cost the US over $2.3 million per kilometer, at least four times the average cost of building a road in Afghanistan.

Finally, there is the inevitable short-fall of some $10 billion — equivalent to thirty times the annual national education budget. Just $15 billion in aid promised since 2001 has so far been spent. The list of culprits is long. The European Union has distributed less than two-thirds of its commitments for 2002-2008. The US and World Bank has distributed only half of their’s and the Asian Development Bank and India have disbursed only a third of what they promised.

Why do we just make the same mistakes time and again. As history repeats itself, the US and Britain wonder why they are losing the war…