The Diplomat
The judge of the Court of Instruction number 5 of the Audiencia Nacional (Spanish National Court), Santiago Pedraz, has opened an investigation against three senior leaders of Equatorial Guinea, including a son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping and torture of four Equatoguinean opponents, two of them of Spanish nationality.
Specifically, according to the newspaper El Pais and other media, those under investigation are the head of the Foreign Security Service, Carmelo Ovono Obiang, son of President Obiang, and two other high-ranking security officials, the Minister of State for Internal Security, Nicolas Obama Nchama, and the Director General of Presidential Security, Isaac Ngema Endo. It so happens that both Ovono Obiang and Nicolas Obama have strong ties with Spain, since the former has been living in our country since 2020 (specifically in Marbella) and is married to a Spanish woman, and the latter owns a house in the Madrid town of Villalbilla and is the father of five children who live in Spain.
Those who also have strong ties to Spain are the alleged victims of the investigated. Specifically, Feliciano Efa Mangue and Julio Obama Mefuman have Spanish nationality and Martin Obiang Ondo Mbasogo and Bienvenido Ndong Ondo Eyang are two Equatoguinean citizens who have been legally residing in Madrid for more than fifteen years. The four belong to the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea Third Republic (MLGE3R) and were sentenced in March 2020 by a military court to prison terms ranging from 60 to 90 years for alleged coup d’état, after a trial marred by “serious procedural irregularities,” according to the American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights. Both judges and prosecutors were appointed by President Obiang by executive decree.
The trial for the alleged coup took place between March and May 2019 and concluded with 112 convicted to sentences ranging from three years and one day to 97 years. Among those prosecuted and sentenced were the two aforementioned Spanish nationals (Feliciano Efa Mangue, 40, a soldier in the Spanish Army, sentenced to 90 years; and Julio Obama Mefuman, 59 years old, former corporal in the Spanish Army, sentenced to 60 years) and the other two Equatoguinean citizens with fifteen years of residence in Spain (Martin Obiang Ondo Mbasogo, 42 years old lawyer, president of the group; and Bienvenido Ndong Ondo Eyang, 40 years old businessman, treasurer of the party and sentenced to 90 years). Three of the four kidnapped in South Sudan, Martin Obiang Ondo, Bienvenido Ndong Ondo and Feliciano Efa Mangue, were tried in absentia.
The facts
According to the facts contained in the complaint filed before the Audiencia Nacional precisely by the MLGE3R (and admitted last October), the three investigated by Pedraz were traveling in the presidential plane in which the four detainees (including the two Spaniards) were transferred to Malabo after being allegedly kidnapped in late 2019 (therefore, after the trial but before the reading of the sentences) in South Sudan for their alleged association with an alleged coup attempt in 2017. Apparently, the four abductees had been invited by a friend to travel from South Sudan to Ethiopia, but the invitation was simply a trap to capture them and transfer them Equatorial Guinea.
The four men had left Spain on 12 November 2019 for South Sudan and disappeared in South Sudan three days later, after which their relatives learned that they had been abducted and transferred to Equatorial Guinea. According to the information received, they were first detained at Black Beach prison in Malabo and then transferred to the new prison in Mongomo on the mainland. According to Amnesty International, the authorities denied the Spanish Embassy in Equatorial Guinea permission to visit them in prison, despite the Spanish nationality of two of them.
According to the complaint, reported by the Europa Press agency, the four detainees had been “clandestinely transferred in an official plane of the Equatorial Guinean regime, and locked up in a detention center located in Oveng Asem, in the district of Mongomo, where they continue to this day”, after which they were “tortured and forced to apologize to the leader of the Equatoguinean regime under pressure in front of the Equatorial Guinean public TV”. Likewise, both Ovono Obiang and Obama Nchama were present both in the official plane with which the kidnapping was carried out and in directing “some of the torture sessions in the basements of the penitentiary”.
According to judicial sources quoted by the media, the evidence against Obiang’s son and the other two Guinean security officers is based on the testimony of two protected witnesses – one of whom was present during the torture – and on the accounts of some of the victims, who were able to report what happened from prison thanks to the help of a civil servant who had fled Equatorial Guinea.
