Desert hunt for British P.M.’s son

Press, 14 January 1982, Page 1

Desert hunt for British P.M.’s son

NZPA Paris A rescue team is searching the Sahara Desert for Mark Thatcher, son of the British Prime Minister, Mrs Thatcher. Mr Thatcher has been stranded in the Sahara, in southern Algeria, since his car broke down four days ago during a rally. Organisers of the Paris to Dakar, Senegal, rally said that Mr Thatcher, aged 28, was erroneously reported to have been found unharmed on Tuesday.

“An aircraft sent to search for him yesterday did not find him,” said a spokesman for the rally yesterday. “It began searching for him again today. We have no information that he has been

found yet." The organisers said the confusion about Mr Thatcher’s whereabouts may have stemmed from the finding on Tuesday of another competitor who had been lost in the Sahara. Serge Bacou, of France who is racing in the motorcycle division of the rally, was found unharmed. In Algiers, however, a spokesman at the British Embassy said a search aircraft had seen Mr Thatcher

but had been unable to land because of rough terrain near the Algerian-Mali border. The organisers in Paris said they had no such information. Mr Thatcher and his codriver, Charlotte Verney, of France, were last seen on Friday about 69km northeast of the city of Timeaouine, Algeria, where their car suffered a broken axle during the sjxth leg of the 16,000 km race'. A spokesman • for Mrs Thatcher said in London that she' had been told of the position but was not panicking. The rally began in Paris on New Year’s Day and will end on January 20 in Dakar, the capital of Senegal.