The former SAS officer accused of plotting to overthrow the dictator of Equatorial Guinea was yesterday paraded in shackles on state television in Malabo, the capital, guarded by a soldier with a machinegun.

Final proof that Simon Mann is being held in the feared Black Beach prison in Equatorial Guinea emerged as the former officer was forced before the television cameras more than five days after he vanished from a prison cell in the Zimbabwean capital of Harare.

Andy Kerman, a lawyer acting for Mann’s family, said that parading him on state televison “breached international laws covering the treatment of prisoners”.

Equatorial Guinea’s ambassador in London was summoned yesterday to the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, where Lord Malloch Brown, a minister, demanded that Mann be allowed to see a lawyer.

In a further development yesterday, eight law lords, headed by Lord Bingham of Cornhill, stopped the hearing into a case brought by the government of Equatorial Guinea because of the refusal to guarantee Mann’s welfare and legal rights.

Jose Olo Obono, the attorney general of Equatorial Guinea, had been seeking the right to claim compensation from Mann and his alleged co-plotters. The request had been rejected by the High Court and Appeal Court on the grounds that it was beyond the jurisdiction of British law.

Lord Bingham told Mr Obono yesterday that the hearing would be adjourned until assurances could be given about Mann’s rights to see a lawyer. The attorney general was also told that Equatorial Guinea would have to pay for all the time wasted as a result of the adjournment.

Half a dozen MPs yesterday called on the Government to take action against Equatorial Guinea over the “kidnap” of the former British officer. Mann’s family have claimed he was illegally extradited from Zimbabwe to Equatorial Guinea.

Julian Lewis, Conservative MP for New Forest East, said: “Quiet diplomacy has failed and we now have to save this man, whatever he has and hasn’t done, from torture and a horrible death.”

Mann, 55, was found guilty of buying arms illegally after being arrested at Harare airport in 2004. He was released from jail last year but rearrested on an extradition warrant from Equatorial Guinea which accused him of plotting to overthrow President Nguema, the country’s dictator.

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