Foreign coup plotters given long jail terms

A South African mercenary was found guilty Friday of leading a failed coup against the president of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea and sentenced to 34 years in jail, police and court sources said. The sources, contacted by telephone from neighbouring Gabon, said four other South Africans, and six Armenians who crewed a transport plane that operated charter flights in Central Africa, also received heavy prison sentences for their part in the attempt to overthrow President Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Two Equatorial Guineans associated with them were also convicted and jailed. All were found guilty of preparing the way for an abortive mercenary invasion of the former Spanish colony last March. A plane carrying 67 mainly South African mercenaries was prevented from reaching Equatorial Guinea after it was detained during a stopover in Zimbabwe to pick up weapons. The panel of judges convicted 13 of the 19 people who appeared in court acquitted the remaining seven. They ignored prosecution calls for du Toit and exiled opposition leader Severo Moto, who was tried in absentia, to be sentenced to death by firing squad. The court sentenced Moto, who was accused of masterminding the plot to overthrow Obiang, to 63 years in jail. The president, who has been widely accused of corruption and human rights abuse, has ruled Equatorial Guinea since he deposed and killed his uncle, Macias Nguema, in a 1979 coup. Moto, who leads a government in exile, denied all involvement in the coup attempt. He and eight of his “ministers” were tried in absentia by the court at a two-day hearing last week. Tiny Equatorial Guinea, which in the last decade has become Africa’s third-biggest oil producer, said the plot to overthrow Obiang and install Moto in his place, had received support and finance from prominent individuals in South Africa, Britain and Spain. Prosecutor Jose Olo Obono had called for the death penalty for both Moto and du Toit, a 48-year-old South African accused of leading a 14-member group of foreign “dogs of war” arrested in Malabo in March. Olo Obono said the eight South Africans and six Armenian pilots detained were involved in a web of international intrigue funded by a group of foreigners including Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. Thatcher, who denies the allegations, is to face charges connected to the alleged plot in South Africa next April. He is also due to answer questions put by him by Equatorial Guinea in a South African court on February 18. The court’s decision not to hand down any death sentences could facilitate attempts by Malabo to have Thatcher extradited. Pretoria might oppose such a move it believed he could face the death penalty. Four of the South Africans arrested in March with du Toit were sentenced to 17 years each, while three others were acquitted. Three Armenian pilots also arrested with du Toit, were found guilty of planning to fly in mercenaries and military equipment and were sentenced to 24 years each. Another three Armenians were given jail terms of 14 years. Of the total 19 shackled and handcuffed prisoners in court, two Equatorial Guineans were sentenced to a year and three were acquitted. Moto’s eight “ministers” in exile were each sentenced in their absence to 52 years behind bars. Although du Toit originally confessed to knowing about the mercentary invasion 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. Standing in ankle-chains and handcuffs, he said: "There hasn’t been any coup attempt.” “We have done nothing wrong. Since our arrest, we have been chained like wild animals.” “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 during the trial. Du Toit and the other 13 foreigners 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 Harare as they were 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, but they were sentenced to 12 and 16 months in Zimbabwe for violating immigration laws. Simon Mann, a former officer in Britain's elite SAS special forces unit, was accused of being the ringleader of the mercenaries arrested in Zimbabwe. He was sentenced to seven years in jail after being convicted by a Harare court of illegally trying to buy weapons. Mann is a friend of Thatcher’s. British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw earlier this month admitted during parliamentary question time that London had been tipped off about the plot several weeks before the arrests. Asked by an opposition member of parliament when the British government was first informed of a suspected plot, Straw replied “In late January 2004.”