Simon Mann Simon Mann Simon Francis Mann (born 26 June 1952) is a former British Army officer and mercenary. He served part of a 34-year prison sentence in Equatorial Guinea for his role in a failed coup d'état in 2004, before receiving a presidential pardon on humanitarian grounds on 2 November 2009. Mann was extradited from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea on 1 February 2008, having been accused of planning a "coup d'état" to overthrow the government by leading a mercenary force into the capital Malabo in an effort to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Charges in South Africa of aiding a
Christianity in Equatorial Guinea Christianity in Equatorial Guinea Christianity in Equatorial Guinea dates back to pre-independence, when Equatorial Guinea was a colony of Portugal and Spain. Today almost 90% of the population are Christian. The majority are Roman Catholics, though there are also a few thousand Methodists and Presbyterians. Roman Catholicism reached Equatorial Guinea with the Portuguese in the late 15th century. The colony was ceded to Spain in 1778. From the mid-nineteenth-century there were various Protestant missions, such as Baptist missions from the West Indies (in 1841), Primitive Methodists from England, and Presbyterians (in 1850) from the United States. An 1853 concordat between