Fears were growing on Wednesday night about the fate of the man at the centre of last year’s murky coup plot in Equatorial Guinea, after reports that he had been assasinated.
Investigators in three European countries are looking for Severo Moto, the exiled opposition leader whom the British mercenary Simon Mann and his friend Mark Thatcher last year allegedly planned to make president of the oil-rich west African country.
Moto, who met Mann in the Canary Islands shortly before the botched attempt to overthrow the President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has not been seen for at least 10 days.
Spain’s intelligence services were leading the hunt for him, according to Spanish media, amid fears that he had been killed in either Croatia or Italy. Moto’s cellphone was not answered on Wednesday and its message box was full.
Spain’s El PaÃÂs newspaper reported that the Spanish government had said the opposition leader had travelled to Zagreb twice last month and might have gone back there. El PaÃÂs quoted a foreign ministry source as saying the Spanish government was ”increasingly convinced that [Mr Moto] has been killed”.
Moto had been making trips to Zagreb ”on business”, El PaÃÂs said.
Observers speculated on Wednesday, however, that he had been buying arms or hiring mercenaries for another coup attempt. Moto had called a fellow opposition leader eight days ago, saying he was in Rome, the paper said.
On Wednesday a close aide of the opposition leader, who did not wish to be named, told Reuters that Moto was always under threat. ”We’ve been denouncing for a long time the threats posed not only to the Guinean people but also to exiles by the Obiang regime. Anything we say can put us in danger.”
A Spanish foreign ministry spokesperson in Madrid, where Moto has lived in exile since the mid-80s, said on Wednesday that it had ”begun making contacts to verify the reports, but so far had no evidence to back the rumours”.
Spain has kept a close eye on Moto since he was accused by prosecutors in Zimbabwe of sponsoring the coup attempt led by Mann last year. He was given political asylum by Spain, although the Foreign Minister, Miguel Angel Moratinos, says Spain will not allow itself to be used as a base for coup attempts.
Moto allegedly offered a total of $1,8-million and oil rights to Mann — a former SAS officer — and arms dealers if they toppled Guinea’s president.
”We believe Moto would just be another autocrat,” Adolfo Marugan, director of Spain’s Association for Democratic Solidarity with Equatorial Guinea, said on Wednesday.
Thatcher pleaded guilty this year to charges that he helped to bankroll the coup plot. He received a four-year suspended jail sentence and a R3-million fine in South Africa, where he was living at the time.
Moto has long accused Obiang’s regime of maintaining power through murder, of robbery, embezzling state funds and trafficking drugs and arms.
Equatorial Guinea, a country of 500 000 inhabitants, gained independence from Spain in 1968 and is now the third biggest oil producer in sub-Saharan Africa. Obiang, widely accused of human rights violations, came to power in 1979 after overthrowing and executing his uncle, Francisco Macias Nguema.
Guinea has jailed a dozen mercenaries involved in the coup attempt for up to 34 years; they include Nick du Toit, the alleged mercenary and arms dealer who retracted a confession, alleging torture. Four other South Africans and six Armenians received terms of up to 24 years each.
Moto was sentenced in absentia to 63 years, while eight other opposition exiles received sentences of up to 52 years each.
Amnesty International last week warned that conditions inside the Black Beach prison in the Equatorial Guinean capital Malabo, where the mercenaries are held, had deteriorated so seriously that some 70 prisoners were at imminent risk of death from starvation.
Mann is serving a four-year jail term in Zimbabwe, where many of the mercenaries were caught as they prepared to fly to Equatorial Guinea. – Guardian Unlimited Â