The man arrested last weekend over an alleged plot to assassinate President Thabo Mbeki appears to have been caught in the crossfire of the power struggle between Deputy President Jacob Zuma and National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka.

Hassan Solomon, also known as Bheki Jacobs, was released on Friday when charges of conspiracy to commit murder were dropped. Solomon, 41, was arrested last Saturday on suspicion of involvement in a plot to kill Mbeki.

Now Solomon's lawyer is to subpoena information from the police regarding the identity of the complainant who fingered Solomon. The charge sheet did not name the person. Solomon said he was considering suing the source of the allegations that he was involved in a conspiracy to murder Mbeki.

This is not the first time Solomon has fallen foul of influential figures within the ANC. Yesterday he revealed he had been jailed by the ANC in exile on "trumped-up" charges based on disinformation by former ANC intelligence agent Mo Shaik.

'I knew too much about what Mo did in the 1980s'

In an interview in Cape Town on Saturday he claimed he had been jailed in the ANC's notorious Quatro camp in Angola in mid-1986 on the strength of a false report from the ANC intelligence unit Shaik ran in what was then Natal. The report allegedly named Solomon as an apartheid spy.

In testimony before the Hefer commission, Shaik, who earlier said he was "flying the flag" for Zuma, last week suggested people close to the Scorpions would be arrested for conspiracy to murder. Solomon is a consultant who freely admits to having blown the whistle on corruption within the arms deal - the origins of Zuma's trouble.

Following Shaik's comments at the Hefer Commission, police swooped on Solomon's Cape Town home and arrested him. He was flown by private jet from military airbase Ysterplaat to Waterkloof in Pretoria. The ownership of the jet remains a mystery.

As the evidence of Shaik and his co-accuser, Mac Maharaj, crumbled in cross-examination before the commission, the e-mail relating to a plot to kill Mbeki, by tampering with his jet, started circulating.

From its distribution in print, the e-mail was sent to Shaik by one Gary Cunning (sic), of East Coast Security Company, allegedly one of the private security firms employed by Shaik to build a case against Ngcuka.

It appeared Shaik himself sent the e-mail to Mark Hankel, a director in the Crime Intelligence Services, who in turn sent it to his commissioner, Raymond Lala. Lala is an old associate of Maharaj and Shaik in Operation Vula.

"Any of these guys could have put my name on the e-mail," Solomon said. "But how can he (Shaik) still have the power to run a network, control the state and bypass the constitutional rights of people?"

Solomon, who now runs a private security consultancy, said when he first heard about the alleged conspiracy to murder Mbeki earlier this month, he immediately reported the matter to the Scorpions.

Solomon, a veteran Soviet-trained ANC intelligence operative who cut his teeth in the struggle in the volatile 1980s Natal, yesterday also painted a picture of a bitter 20-year-old power-struggle between ANC factions that seems to have reared its head again.

Solomon was released on R3 000 bail by the Pretoria Regional Court on Friday after the state withdrew charges of conspiring to murder Mbeki. He suspects Shaik of being behind last week's arrest. "He has an obsession with me," Solomon said of Shaik.

Solomon said he had been tortured and interrogated in Quatro for six months. He said all his interrogators wanted to know was to whom he was reporting in the ANC and who comprised the network to which he belonged.

The late MK commander Chris Hani eventually organised his release, for fear of Solomon exposing too much detail of specific networks under interrogation.

It appears the animosity between Shaik and Solomon started nearly two decades ago, when a faction aligned to the trade unions and churches tried to stem the power wielded by what Solomon calls the "Indian cabal" from the then Natal Indian Congress (NIC).

Solomon was aligned to the Youth Forum which opposed the NIC, to which the Shaik family belonged.

"I knew too much about what Mo did in the 1980s," Solomon said.

While suggestions have been made that Solomon is a bit of a Walter Mitty character, 1980s associates told the Sunday Tribune this week that he was a "bright, strong and committed" activist.

The 1980s infighting became so destructive that in 1986, then ANC president Oliver Tambo pulled most of the cadres involved out of South Africa, Solomon claims.

Solomon became Bheki Jacobs and soon found himself in Angola, where he was arrested. "Mo told people I would be rotting in Angola," Solomon said yesterday.

He claims that after he returned to South Africa as Uranin Vladimir Solomon in 1994, after a stint in the Soviet Union, Shaik also spread rumours that he was a "KGB agent".

Shaik referred all queries to his brother and lawyer, Yunis Shaik, who did not return calls on Saturday.

Solomon freely admits he was the original source of documents on alleged corruption in the arms deal that led to an investigation and the charges against another Shaik brother, Schabir.

He lost his job at the Africa Institute as a result of being exposed as whistle-blower by former Sunday Times journalist Ranjeni Munusamy, who also wrote about Shaik's allegations against Ngcuka.

Solomon alleges the Shaiks' allegiance to Zuma also goes back to the 1980s struggle and that the battle has resurfaced in the context of a power struggle for Mbeki's succession, for which Zuma is a frontrunner. "It is important to ask why Mo's network is still so entrenched that he could get (commissioner) Lala now to arrest me," Solomon said.

Lala would not respond to suggestions that Shaik wielded influence over him.

"If a complaint comes into my office, I deal with it," Lala said on Saturday. "I don't investigate dockets myself. And I don't know how I am being dragged into this. I was out of the country for a week and just came back."

With acknowledgements to Christelle Terreblanche and the Sunday Argus.