Equatorial Guinea Sentences 112 to Jail for Plot to Kill Leader

(Bloomberg) -- A court in Equatorial Guinea handed 112 people prison terms of as long as 90 years for attempting to overthrow and kill President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in a trial which defense lawyers said was fraught with irregularities.

The defendants were found guilty of participating in a plot in late 2017 to attack Obiang, who has ruled Opec’s smallest member since 1979, the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights said in a preliminary report released on Thursday. The sentences ranged from three to 90 years on charges of treason, terrorism and illegal possession of arms, it said.

Officials obtained confessions through torture, appointed judges in the middle of the case and violated trial guarantees, said Ponciano Mbomio Nvo, who represented 10 defendants.

“My clients were submitted to horrible torture,” he said. “They are the relatives and friends of the plotters who fled the country after the coup attempt.”

In testimony broadcast live by state-run media in March, several defendants said they were clobbered, electrocuted and suspended in the air with their hands and feet tied during their yearlong imprisonment. The trial was suspended for a week following their comments and broadcast halted.

Obiang, Africa’s longest-serving president who claims to have foiled 10 coup attempts since he seized power from his uncle in a bloody putsch, is accused by human-rights groups of arbitrarily detaining and torturing dissidents. The country has one of the worst rights records in the world alongside North Korea and Syria, according to the latest ranking of US-based think tank Freedom House.

To contact the reporter on this story: Alonso Soto in Dakar at asoto54@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Andre Janse van Vuuren at ajansevanvuu@bloomberg.net, ;Antony Sguazzin at asguazzin@bloomberg.net, Robert Brand

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