The trial of eight South Africans accused of plotting a coup d’état in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea is due to open in Malabo on Monday with claims of torture and denial of due process casting doubts over the proceedings.
The eight men detained at the notorious Black Beach prison in Malabo along with six Armenians and a German — who died in custody — were arrested early March for conspiring to topple leader Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
The eight South Africans are to go on trial along with the six Armenians on Monday but South African officials said that the group saw their lawyers for the first time on Friday.
Family members say the men have been severely tortured and even though the official cause of German Gerhard Eugen Nershz’s death is cerebral malaria, Amnesty International has said he ”died on March 17, apparently as a result of torture”.
Three more men have since contracted malaria. Two have recovered but a third is still ill.
The men have for the largest part of their incarceration been held incommunicado, according to Amnesty International, and two wives from South Africa were only allowed to visit them for the first time earlier this month.
”The lawyers have just seen them today [Friday] and this was the first contact they had,” said Billy Masetlha, advisor to South African President Thabo Mbeki.
Mbeki, after a meeting with Obiang in July, announced his government would send a team to Malabo, on request from Equatorial Guinea, ”to assist them in understanding what would represent a free and fair and just trial”, Masetlha said.
”We have been pushing them to give access to the lawyers, however it happened too late. The case is on Monday and clearly a case of that level would need some preparation.
”From my simple reading of the situation… I would think it would be possible that the lawyers go to the court and ask can you please give us more time to study the charges, consult the clients, prepare the documents,” said Masethla.
The 15 men arrested in Equatorial Guinea were nabbed two days after Zimbabwean authorities detained 70 suspected mercenaries at Harare airport following a tip-off from the South African government.
The Equatorial Guinea men, led by South African Nick du Toit, were allegedly an advance group responsible for the preparations of the coup d’état before the arrival of the 70 suspected soldiers of fortune who took off from South Africa and stopped in Harare to pick up weapons.
”I am very, very worried about this court case. My first name is fear,” said Belinda du Toit, the wife of Nick du Toit.
”My logic tells me that you cannot have a trial like this without legal representation. For cases like these you need months and months to prepare. I do not think it could be a fair trial,” said Du Toit.
The men who are awaiting judgement in Harare say they were on their way to guard diamond mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo while the Equatorial Guinea detainees deny any involvement in the alleged plot.
Nick du Toit (48), owns fishery and air-transport businesses in Equatorial Guinea.
He is a former member of the South African police’s elite Special Task Force unit and has been linked to Executive Outcomes, a mercenary outfit that closed down in the 90s when the African National Congress government outlawed mercenary
activity.
Du Toit is also said to have good relations with the soldiers of the former so-called ”Buffalo Battalion”, a mercenary unit created by the apartheid government in South Africa in the 1970s to fight in Namibia and Angola.
Five of the South African men detained with Du Toit, all of them of Angolan descent, were members of the Buffalo Battalion.
Also arrested with Du Toit is Bones Boonzaaier, another a former Special Task Force member. He is said to be a business associate of Du Toit and took care of the logistics of his companies in Equatorial Guinea.
The third man in detention is Mark Schmidt. He has no military background and was employed by Du Toit as a cook. – Sapa-AFP