Rédaction Africa Links 24 with José María Irujo Amatria
Published on 2024-04-01 03:40:00
Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, pursues and kidnaps his opponents to the farthest corner of the planet. A confidential report from the General Information Police Department (CGI), as well as work from various NGOs, the UN, and the US Department of State conclude that the dictator’s secret services have kidnapped 34 dissidents between 1997 and 2019.
Payments to hitmen or African collaborators and the use of the presidential plane as a diplomatic shield to transport victims to Malabo is the common pattern in these kidnappings. Some opponents were executed, while others have disappeared, according to reports from a police investigation accessed by EL PAÍS. All the kidnappings bear an extraordinary resemblance to the four opponents, two of them Spaniards, abducted in South Sudan in 2019, the latest on the macabre list. For this abduction, the National Court has just ordered the search and arrest of Carmelo Ovono Obiang, Secretary of State for the Presidency and son of the president, the Interior Minister, and the Director General of Security. Spanish, Italian, and Belgian police forces are working together on the investigation of several cases.
The examination of Obiang’s relentless persecution of his exiled opponents is a walk through horror. In each story, traps, deception, or false job offers emerge to lead victims to African countries where hitmen or local police, in exchange for money, kidnapped the opponents and took them to the Guinean embassy. And from there, in diplomatic cars to the presidential plane, ending up in the sinister Black Beach prison in Malabo, a black hole where mistreatment, torture, and humidity force prisoners to live in dramatic conditions. A hell where the current president was once the warden before overthrowing his uncle, Francisco Macías. The final episode concludes with military trials, without guarantees, in which they are sentenced to prison terms ranging from 30 to 90 years.
Overdose of Diazepam and Valium
In 2005, Juan Ondo Abaga, a former Navy commander, had been living in Cotonou, the capital of Benin, under the protection of the government and the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) for eight years. A Beninese man who had earned his friendship convinced him to travel to a border town with Nigeria where he would introduce him to an investor for a possible business. They slept together in a hotel and during dinner, with the complicity of the hotel owners, he was anesthetized with an overdose of Diazepam and Valium. Obiang’s agents transported his unconscious body to Nigeria and took him to the residence of the Guinean ambassador in Abuja, the capital. The dictator’s presidential plane awaited at the airport. The Nigerian police interrogated his kidnappers about the identity of the man they were carrying on a stretcher. They identified him as a member of the presidential entourage and claimed the urgency of the transfer for health reasons. Juan Ondo ended up in Black Beach prison. Thanks to international pressure, he was released three years later.
Read the original article(Spanish) on EL Pais
