South African Nick du Toit was sentenced on Friday by a court in Equatorial Guinea to 34 years in jail and exiled opposition leader Severo Moto to 64 years for a plot to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema.
The prosecutor in the trial, Attorney General Jose olo Obonol last week recommended that du Toit and Moto be sentenced to death, while Obiang, who himself came to power in a putsch, vowed that ”exemplary sentences” would be imposed on the alleged plotters.
Du Toit, who has been held in prison in Equatorial Guinea since his arrest in the central African country in February, was in court to hear the verdict, while Moto was tried in absentia.
Four of Du Toit’s South African co-defendants were sentenced to 17 years in jail, while three others were acquitted.
The Armenians were jailed for 24 years, for three of them, and 14 for the other three.
Eight members of a government in exile set up by Moto in Spain, who were also tried in their absence, were sentenced to 52 years in prison each.
Obono said on Monday he would call for the death penalty for Du Toit. He also said at the start of the trial that he would call for prison terms ranging from 26 years to 86 years for Du Toit’s co-defendants.
The eight South Africans, six Armenians and four Equato-Guineans, including former economic planning minister Antonio Javier Nguema Nchama, were charged with ”crimes against the head of state, against the form of government” and ”crimes which compromise peace and independence of the state, treason, illegal possession of arms and ammunition, terrorism and possessing explosives”.
The involvement of the Equato-Guineans in the alleged plot to topple Obiang, who has ruled the tiny Central African state since 1979, was not mentioned until the court case got under way.
Obiang announced the arrests of the alleged mercenaries in early March, saying they had been hired by Moto to oust him.
Handcuffed and in leg irons, the accused were brought by military vehicles to the international conference hall in Banapa, a suburb of Malabo, which has been transformed into a makeshift courtroom for the trial.
About 80 people, including two of the suspected mercenaries’ wives, human-rights activists and foreign diplomats, were in the public gallery for the trial.
The South African and Armenian suspects have been held at Malabo’s notorious Black Beach prison since March. Their arrests coincided almost to the day with that of 70 suspected mercenaries detained at Harare International airport in Zimbabwe following a tip-off from the South African government.
The men in Equatorial Guinea, led by Du Toit, were allegedly an advance group responsible for the preparations of the coup before the arrival of the 70 suspected soldiers of fortune who took off from South Africa and stopped in Zimbabwe to pick up weapons.
Du Toit, a South African arms dealer, retracted his confession on Tuesday and said he had been tortured.
”There was no attempted coup d’état in this country,” he told the court. ”I had to tell these people what they wanted. It was the only way to stay alive.”
Du Toit, wearing shorts and ankle shackles, said: ”We were tortured, we were roughly handled. They killed Gerhard Merxz and I realised that if I did not work with these people they could continue killing us one by one.” Prison authorities have said that Merxz died of cerebral malaria.
Du Toit blamed coup plans on Simon Mann, now serving a prison sentence for related charges in Zimbabwe.
According to agency reports in Malabo, Du Toit claimed he had been approached about a possible coup by Mann, a former British special forces officer. But he had refused to take part.
”They chose the first South Africans they could get their hands on and they arrested them,” he said of the authorities in Equatorial Guinea.
He changed his story as the trial resumed after an 11-week break to let prosecutors gather more evidence.
Du Toit had been the only one to admit a role in a plot to oust President Teodoro Obiang, which prosecutors say was backed by financiers keen for a stake in sub-Saharan Africa’s third-largest oil producer.
Mark Thatcher, son of the former prime minister Margaret Thatcher, is awaiting trial in South Africa on suspicion of helping to fund the scheme. He has denied involvement.
On Tuesday, Du Toit’s defence lawyer, Fabian Nsue Nguema, said eight new names, including Thatcher’s, had been added to the list of accused in Malabo.
There were reports from Malabo that President Obiang is seeking to have Thatcher extradited. But South African diplomatic sources say this is unlikely to happen. They intend to try him themselves in the new year and say they are confident of the quality of their evidence.
The Equatorial Guinea regime has accused two other London-based businessmen, Elly Calil and Greg Wales, of helping to fund the coup on behalf of Moto, who is now in Spain.
The Malabo regime has obtained bank and telephone records which appear to be consistent with many of Du Toit’s original statements, and show large sums being transferred to him from Mann’s offshore account in Guernsey at the time of the attempted coup.
President Obiang, who has been accused of looting the country’s new oil wealth, appears to have practically unlimited funds to spend on legal efforts around the world pursuing the alleged conspirators.
He has asked to see the British envoy Richard Wildash, who is high commissioner in Cameroon and accredited to Malabo, to demand an explanation of the British government’s confirmation last week that it had advance knowledge of the coup attempt.
Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, last week confirmed in a parliamentary answer that the Foreign Office had received reports of coup preparations in January, more than a month before the attempt was made. By that time, rumours were widespread in South Africa. – Sapa-AFP and Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004