LONDON, Aug 31 (AFP) - The Texan wife of Mark Thatcher, who is under house arrest in South Africa following accusations he helped finance a coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, arrived in Britain on Tuesday.
Diane Thatcher swept through London's Heathrow airport surrounded by police and refused to say why she had left South Africa, or comment on reports that she would visit her mother-in-law, former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher.
However a spokesman for the family said later that she had no plans to see the ex-premier and was travelling straight to another London airport, Gatwick, to catch a flight to Dallas.
Lord Tim Bell, a public relations millionaire who has been close friends with Margaret Thatcher for many years, said Diane was taking the couple's two children, aged 15 and 11, to start school in the United States.
"She's taking the children to the USA. The children are going to school there but then she will be going back to South Africa," Bell said, refusing to say when Diane Thatcher would return.
"He has been incorrectly charged and we are working to clear that up, so you can't compromise the children's education over these allegations," Mark Thatcher's lawyer in Cape Town, Ron Wheeldon, told AFP.
Mark Thatcher, 51, a millionaire businessman, was arrested last week by South African police and is under house arrest at his Cape Town home. He has been ordered by a court to surrender his passport and report daily to police.
South African officials said on Monday that they were examining a request from Equatorial Guinea to question Thatcher about his role as the alleged financier of a failed plot to topple the president of the oil-rich state.
He is due in court on November 25 to answer charges he contributed 275,000 dollars (230,000 euros) to Briton Simon Mann, the alleged mastermind of the coup.
Thatcher's lawyers insist he had nothing to do with the plot and is simply a personal friend of Mann, the founder of mercenary firm Executive Outcomes.
His mother, who served as British premier from 1979 to 1990, returned to London last week from a holiday in the United States but has yet to comment on the case.
Wheeldon said the Thatchers had planned for some time to send the children to school in the United States where they were also enrolled two years ago.
South African investigators said last week that Thatcher was planning to flee South Africa for Texas when he was arrested and charged on August 25 with contributing 275,000 dollars to the alleged plan to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, who has been in power for 25 years.
Thatcher is charged under South Africa's law barring mercenary activity and faces a fine or jail term if convicted.