Eduardo González
The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has decided to cede to Equatorial Guinea the jurisdiction over the alleged kidnapping of four opponents, two of them of Spanish nationality, for which a son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo was being investigated in Spain. The magistrate considers that “there is no basis” to conclude that the criminal activity had been committed “at least partially” in Spain. The opposition in exile has expressed its “stupor and total rejection” of the judge’s “malicious” decision.
The National Court had opened an investigation against the head of the Foreign Security Service, Carmelo Ovono Obiang (one of about thirty sons of President Obiang), and two other senior security officials, the Minister of State for Internal Security, Nicolas Obama Nchama, and the Director General of Presidential Security, Isaac Ngema Endo, for their alleged involvement in the kidnapping and torture of four members of the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea-Third Republic (MLGE3R) in November 2019. Ovono Obiang has strong ties to Spain, as he has resided in Marbella since 2020 and is married to a Spanish woman.
As a consequence of this investigation, Equatorial Guinea’s vice president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mangue (also son of the president), accused Spain in early 2023 of “interference, humiliation and disrespect for sovereignty”. In response to these accusations, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs reminded Malabo that in Spain there is “separation of powers”.
The four kidnapped opponents are Feliciano Efa Mangue, Julio Obama Mefuman (both with Spanish nationality), Martin Obiang Ondo Mbasogo and Bienvenido Ndong Ondo (long-term residents and under protection in our country), who, according to the accusation, had been convinced by deception to travel from Madrid to Juba (South Sudan), where they were kidnapped and disappeared on November 15, 2019.
The four opponents were sentenced in March 2020 by a military court to between 60 and 90 years in prison for alleged coup d’état. Julio Obama Mefuman, a former corporal in the Spanish Army and sentenced to 90 years, died in mid-January 2023 in Bata hospital. His party claimed that he had died as a result of torture, while the Malabo regime hastened to announce that he had died “of illness”. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the Equatorial Guinean ambassador to ask for explanations and to request a pardon for Feliciano Efa Mangue. A month later, the European Parliament held the “Equatoguinean dictatorial regime” responsible for the death of Julio Obama Mefuman.
Pedraz has no doubts about the impartiality of the process
According to what the Audiencia informed yesterday in a press release, Judge Santiago Pedraz has received a rogatory commission from the authorities of Equatorial Guinea for the transfer of jurisdiction over this case to the Second Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice of that country, “since a proceeding has been opened for the same facts and against the same persons as in Spain”.
In the judge’s opinion, “there is no basis to conclude, at least indirectly, that the acts were committed in Spain in such a way that the criminal activity was at least partially carried out in our country”. In the absence of any other evidence, the order continues, “it is only known that they were kidnapped in South Sudan and taken to Equatorial Guinea”. Furthermore, “the fact that it is said that the victims – two of whom had Spanish nationality and the other two resided in Spain – were previously investigated (with surveillance or monitoring in Spain) and then convinced to travel to Sudan (South Sudan) are only mere statements that are not accredited,” he adds.
Therefore, in the judge’s opinion, “the requirements are met so that the crimes investigated in Spain cannot be prosecuted and thus accede to the cession of jurisdiction”. Besides, Pedraz considers that there are no reasons to doubt that these are the facts that the Equatoguinean Supreme Court wants to investigate, nor “that the procedure suffers from a lack of partiality or is merely instrumental”, nor “that a process is not followed with the due guarantees recognized by International Law”.
However, Pedraz recalls that there is “a safeguard clause so that the judge can prosecute the crimes in Spain when the State exercising its jurisdiction is not willing to carry out the investigation or cannot really do so, a clause that should be implemented by submitting a reasoned statement to the Supreme Court once it has been verified that the facts have not been investigated in that State.
“Stupor and total rejection” of the opposition
For their part, the opposition political parties Partido del Progreso, Ciudadanos por la Innovación and Unión Popular expressed yesterday, in a joint statement, their “stupor and total rejection” of Santiago Pedraz’s decision to cede the cause to “a country where he has It has been proven, in more than 40 years, that there is no rule of law” and in which “the dictator, in addition to being head of State and head of Government, is also president of the highest body of Guinean judicial government.”
This decision “grants Guinea jurisdiction so that the Guinean dictatorship continues violating International Law and ignoring the repeated requests of the Spanish Government and the European Parliament to repatriate the body of Julio Obama and so that the Spanish consulate can exercise their consular assistance obligations.”
“The Ecuadorian Guinean opposition hopes that the lawyer of the accusing party will file an appeal and that the National Court will rule favorably, thus stopping the judge’s malicious intentions for shelving a process that has the entire Guinean people and the Spanish and international public opinion,” he added.
