FORMER Royal Scots Guards and SASofficerSimonMannthis weekendliesinshacklesin Zimbabwe'sChikurubiPrison, awaiting extradition to the world's creepiest country where his home is likely to be the world's most frightening jail.

Black Beach Prison in the oil-rich West African microstate of Equatorial Guinea seems to be the next destination of 54-year-old Mann, wanted by the country's president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, to face charges of launching an attempted mercenary coup against him three years ago.

Last week a Zimbabwe magistrate, OmegaMugumbute,orderedthat MannbeextraditedtoEquatorial Guinea,rejectinghislawyers' arguments that he cannot receive a fair trial there, and that he is certain to be tortured and possibly executed.

If Mann's appeal against the decision fails, he will soon be incarcerated in Black Beach Prison, where already one of his fellow conspirators, a German arms trader named Gerhard Merz, has diedafterbeingseverelytortured, accordingtohumanrightsgroup Amnesty International.

Amnesty added that Merz and 14 other coup plotters arrested in Equatorial Guinea were shackled, chained to their beds in Black Beach and beaten aftertheirarrestin2004.Some sustained broken ribs and were threatened with summary execution.

WhenMerzdied,BlackBeach officials said he had succumbed to cerebral malaria, but Amnesty said it had been reliably informed that he died as a result of torture.

If you look at a map, Equatorial Guinea sits in the steaming hot armpit of West Africa, a small jungle-covered square of mainland territory and a scattering of islands in the Gulf of Guinea that were ruled over for two centuries by Spain with the same kind of bestiality as applied by the regime of Belgian King Leopold the Second in the Congo.

The rulers of independent Equatorial Guinea have inherited only the worst habits of fascist Spain. A bloodthirsty and insecure tyrant, Maçias Nguema, became ruler in 1968 when the country achieved independence. Nguema, the son of a revered and brutal witchdoctor addressed by the majority Fang tribe as "HisSaintlyFather",jailedand murdered his two main rivals.

TenofNguema'sfirst12cabinet ministers were butchered. He banned Western medicines as "unAfrican" and diseases such as malaria, yellow fever and leprosy became prevalent again. The Spanish word for "intellectual" was banned, schools were closed and missionaries expelled from the country.

OneChristmas,150ofNguema's victims were executed by firing squad in the national sports stadium as the presidential military band played Those Were The Days.

In 1973, a mercenary plot - alleged by theSundayTimestohavebeen organised and financed by the novelist Frederick Forsyth - failed. The British author subsequently wrote a novel, The Dogs Of War, widely believed to be based on the failed coup.

In August 1979, Nguema was overthrown and executed at Black Beach by the commander of the National Guard, his nephew, Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has ruled ever since with much the same degree of terror.

Althoughitisnowawashwith revenuesfromrecentlydeveloped massive oil reserves, Equatorial Guinea spends the least of any country, bar Iraq, on health - because nearly all the cashdisappearsintotheNguema family's offshore bank accounts. The country's citizens cannot expect to live beyond50years.Andnocountry anywhere spends less per capita on education.

Nguema has proclaimed himself in constantcontactwithGod.One presidentialaideasserted:"He Nguema can decide who to kill without anyone calling him to account and without going to Hell because it is God himself who gives him his strength."

BothAmnestyInternationaland Human Rights Watch frequently report on extrajudicial executions, torture and rape by Nguema's police and soldiers.

Nguema opponents die behind the bars of Black Beach prison with terrifying regularity. "You never know when they are going to come to chop your head off," one former inmate told Adam Roberts, author of The Wonga Coup, a fast-moving account of the failed coup attempt made by Simon Mann and of that described in Forsyth's novel.

The Mann plot to topple Nguema became known as "The Wonga Coup" whenthenewlyarrestedMann smuggled out letters from Chikurubi Prison to other alleged coup financiers, including Mark Thatcher, son of former primeministerMargaretThatcher, saying: "It may be that getting us out comesdowntoalargesplodgeof wonga!"

Butdespitehiswell-documented barbarism,Nguemahasonetop-ranking international admirer: former USdeputydefencesecretaryand George Bush loyalist Paul Wolfowitz, whosaidofNguemaafterbeing appointedtohiscurrentpostas president of the World Bank: "I was very impressed at his leadership and his government's leadership. I trust he will manage oil revenues according to the standard of transparency and accountability that will ensure that wealth goes to the benefit of the people."