Coup trial verdicts due Nov 26, two suspects face death

Verdicts in the trial of a group of suspected mercenaries accused of plotting to overthrow the president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea will be handed down on 26 November, with two of the suspects facing the death penalty, lawyers close to the defendants said. As the coup trial wound up on Thursday, state prosecutor Jose Olo Obono demanded the death penalty for Severo Moto, the head of a government-in-exile and the alleged mastermind of the conspiracy, as well as South African Nick du Toit, the suspected leader of a group of foreign "dogs of war" arrested in March. Tiny Equatorial Guinea, which in the last decade has become Africa’s third-biggest oil producer, says the plot to end the 25-year-rule of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema and install Moto in his place reached as far as Britain, Spain, South Africa and Zimbabwe. Although du Toit originally confessed to knowing about the plot when the trial first began in August, he retracted his testimony in the closing days, saying he had been tortured into admitting a role. Moto, the opposition leader who is currently living in Spain, also denies the charges. The prosecutor asked for prison terms from 26 to 102 years for seven other South Africans, six Armenians and two Equatorial Guineans, who sat handcuffed and shackled in the court in the capital Malabo. Charges were dropped against three other men from Equatorial Guinea. “The authorities of Equatorial Guinea want the verdict to be a lesson,” Manuel Ondo Mve, a lawyer close to Moto, told IRIN by telephone from Malabo on Friday. Du Toit's lawyer, Fabian Nsue Nguema, said his client and the others had been unfairly treated. “Their imprisonment is groundless,” he told national radio. “Their statements were made under torture.” In court this week, du Toit, standing in ankle-chains and handcuffs, repeatedly protested his innocence. "There hasn’t been any coup attempt,” the 48-year-old was quoted as saying by news agency Reuters. “We have done nothing wrong. Since our arrest, we have been chained like wild animals.” But the state prosecutor was not convinced. "There is a lot of evidence, his own confessions and incriminating proof, and which he signed,” he told the court, saying that du Toit's strategy was to avoid incrimination. The prosecution also requested lengthy jail terms were for eight other suspects, who along with Moto were added to the defendants list and are being tried in absentia. Du Toit and the other 13 foreign mercenaries were arrested in Malabo on 6 March, charged with paving the way for a planeload of South African mercenaries who were arrested 24 hours later in Zimbabwe, allegedly on their way to Equatorial Guinea. In August, all but one of the 67 suspected mercenaries held in Zimbabwe were absolved of attempting to procure arms for the alleged coup in the former Spanish colony but were sentenced to 12 and 16 months in Zimbabwe for violating immigration laws. Former SAS soldier Simon Mann, who is accused of being the mercenary ringleader, on the other hand was jailed for seven years after being convicted by a Harare court of illegally trying to buy weapons. Sir Mark Thatcher, a friend of Mann's and the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was included on a list of 14 people allegedly linked to the plot, which was presented to the Equatorial Guinea court by the prosecution this week Thatcher faces a South African court on 25 November in connection with the suspected conspiracy and could face 15 years if convicted. He was arrested in August in Cape Town on suspicion of helping fund the purchase of a helicopter, breaching laws against aiding foreign mercenary operations. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw last week admitted during parliamentary question time that the government had been tipped off about the plot several weeks before the arrests. Asked by a Tory member when the government was first informed of a suspected plot, Straw replied “In late January 2004.”