The trial of 19 people accused of seeking to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea was scheduled to resume on Monday after five days of hearings last week left the world little the wiser about the reality of their alleged putsch attempt.
Thanks to the discovery of offshore oil, Obiang Nguema has become one of the world’s richest men. He is at the heart of swirling rumors that an international mercenary force financed by the son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher was seeking to overthrow him.
But last week, a court in a court in Zimbabwe absolved most of the 70 men on trial there over the same alleged plot.
In 1979, Obiang Nguema, who has claimed to be in permanent communication with God, seized power from his uncle, whom he had executed. At that time, Equatorial Guinea made the bulk of its export revenue from cocoa.
The discovery of huge offshore oil reserves in 1992 has turned the country into a centre of international attention, but most of the population remains desperately poor. Equatorial Guinea is now the third largest oil exporter in Africa after Nigeria and Angola.
With one exception, the defendants — eight South Africans, six Armenians and five Equatorial Guineans — denied having anything to do with the alleged plot. One, Antonio Javier Nguema Nchama, a former deputy minister for economic planning in the tiny central African country, told the court that he first heard of the alleged coup plot ”when I was arrested four months ago”.
Chief prosecutor Jose Olo Obono is seeking the death sentence for South African Nick du Toit, who is accused of being the ringleader of the alleged coup and has acknowledged that he was in charge of logistics for a group of mercenaries due to arrive from Harare, Zimbabwe.
Olo Obono has also asked for prison sentences ranging from 26 to 86 years for the other accused.
Du Toit was arrested six months ago along with the six Armenian crew members of a cargo plane his company had leased, seven other South Africans, and a German, who died days later in custody.
The official cause of the German’s death has been given as cerebral malaria, but rights groups have said he was tortured to death.
A court in Zimbabwe last week found Briton Simon Mann, a former business partner of du Toit, guilty of attempting to illegally buy arms for the alleged plot in Malabo, but it absolved 66 other suspected mercenaries.
Mann and du Toit set up a company of mercenaries in South Africa that was active in Angola — where it helped protect oil installations during that country’s long civil war — and in Sierre Leone and Papua New Guinea.
Mark Thatcher, the son of the former prime minister, was arrested in South Africa last Wednesday and accused of financing the alleged plot. Equatorial Guinea said Friday it had applied to South Africa to have Thatcher extradited. – Sapa-AFP