Cooked Goose

"Mad Mike "gets ten years

During his five-month trial, Colonel Thomas Michael ("Mad Mike") Hoare, who gained notoriety while soldiering for fortune in the Congo during the 1960s, put up a plucky front. During recesses Hoare entertained visitors with tales of his derring-do and signed copies of his swashbuckling biography, entitled Congo Mercenary. But last week the bravado was gone from the man who used to run a swaggering group of commandos in the Congo who called themselves the Wild Geese. His face ashen, Hoare, 63, slumped in his chair in a Pietermaritzburg courtroom as Judge Neville James found him and 42 fellow mercenaries guilty of airplane hijacking and sentenced Mad Mike to ten years in prison.

Hoare and his mercenary band of brothers were forced to stand trial following their bungled attempt last November to overthrow the socialist government of the Seychelles led by President Albert Rene. The armed mercenaries entered the Seychelles disguised as a beer-drinking tourist party, "The Ancient Order of Froth-Blowers." Hoare's objective was to return to power ex-President James Mancham, 49, a pro-Western leader who was deposed by Rene in a 1977 coup.

But the operation failed when a Mahe airport customs inspector found a weapon hidden in a Froth-Blower's luggage. A gunfight broke out at the airport, in which one mercenary was killed and several oth ers wounded. Desperate to escape, the raiders fought their way to the control tower, guided an incoming Air India 707 to a landing and commandeered the plane. They forced the Air India pilot to fly them 2,500 miles across the Indian Ocean to Durban.

Lawyers for Hoare argued that the mercenaries had harmed no one nor demanded any ransom. Indeed, the government had initially released most of the men after their flight to South Africa, holding only Hoare and four others on the lesser charge of kidnaping, which carries no minimum sentence. But that leniency was abandoned after other nations, including the U.S., warned that South Africa could be struck from air-travel routings unless Pretoria enforced international agreements against harboring of air hijackers. The government then brought hijacking charges against all 43 of the escaped mercenaries.

Only one was declared not guilty last week: Charles William Dukes, an American veteran of Viet Nam, who was carried onto the 707 under heavy sedation after being seriously wounded during the Seychelles gunfight. He was ruled incapable of having taken part in the heist.

Throughout the trial, the Irish-born Hoare insisted that his operation had had the blessing of the South African government. "I see South Africa as the bastion of civilization in an Africa subjected to a total Communist onslaught," he said. "I foresee myself in the forefront of this fight for our very existence." Indeed, more than half of the convicted mercenaries had been members of either the South African Defense Force or the army reserve. There was also evidence that Soviet-made AK-47s and Chinese grenades and ammunition used by the mercenaries had been supplied by South African Defense Force officers.

Judge James declared that individuals in the National Intelligence Service and Defense Force had clearly known about the operation but, nonetheless, ruled that allegations of an official South African connection to the operation were "purely hearsay." The day after the trial, Prime Minister P.W. Botha, who had refrained from commenting until the legal proceedings were completed, insisted that the government had not known of the affair. He charged that Hoare had approached members of the intelligence and military forces with his plan and admitted that arms and ammunition had been given to him. Botha said that "departmental action" would be taken against anyone who had cooperated with Hoare.

The colonel, who got his rank in the Congo, drew the stiffest sentence. His fellow raiders were given from six months to five years, and the judge later reduced most to six months. Hoare and his co-defendants were clearly the lucky ones. Last month four of Hoare's soldiers of fortune who were left behind in the Seychelles were convicted of treason by Rene's government. They are under sentence of death by hanging.

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