Dogs of war? These men in shackles have been whipped into submission
By Raymond Whitaker in Malabo

Independent/UK
01 September 2004

Their wrists and feet shackled, the accused half-crawled, half-fell
out of the high four-wheel-drives that had delivered them to a garish
conference centre-turned courtroom in Equatorial Guinea’s capital.

The flashing lights, blaring sirens and escort of camouflage-clad
troops merely made the gaunt, grey crocodile of men, shuffling silently
through the rain in their T-shirts, shorts and rubber sandals, seem
more pathetic. If these were dogs of war, they had been whipped into
submission long ago.

Since their arrest on 8 March on charges of attempting to overthrow
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, eight former members of South Africa’s
apartheid-era special forces, six Armenian air crew and five local
men have been kept chained 24 hours a day in Malabo’s notorious Black
Beach prison.

Although their leader, Nick du Toit, faces a possible death sentence,
even he must have welcomed the start of their trial last week as an
escape from the uncertainty. But, yesterday, Mr du Toit and his 18
co-accused were thrust back into limbo.

Diplomats and lawyers gathering at the conference centre were expecting
yesterday’s hearing to be the last, with the defence team making
their final pleas before the three judges retired to consider their
verdict, possibly as early as Friday. But after a delay lasting well
over an hour, Equatorial Guinea’s Attorney General, Jose Olo Obono,
began by asking for the case to be suspended indefinitely. All the
proceedings were conducted in Spanish, the language of the country’s
former colonial rulers, but in the midst of the unfamiliar legalese,
the name “Mark Thatcher” could clearly be understood.

The defence objected that it would be inhumane to keep the alleged
mercenaries locked up in harsh conditions with no knowledge of when
they might be freed, but after an adjournment lasting only a couple
of minutes, the judges granted the suspension. Their spokesman, Judge
Salvador Ondo Ncumu, said the case had acquired an “international
dimension”, and it should not continue until investigations elsewhere
had been completed.

The misfortune for Mr du Toit and his colleagues is that two days after
their trial began last week, it was upstaged by the arrest in Cape
Town of Baroness Thatcher’s son. Even though the Equatorial Guinea
arrests coincided six months ago with the seizure of a planeload
of private soldiers in Zimbabwe, led by Simon Mann, an Old Etonian
former SAS officer, the affair generated only moderate international
interest until South Africa’s elite Scorpions crime-busters turned
up at Sir Mark’s mansion in Cape Town.

President Obiang’s regime, which wants to demonstrate the conspiracy
against him went to the highest levels, suddenly found it might be
able to land a much bigger fish. With Mr Thatcher under house arrest
in South Africa and Mr Mann on trial in Zimbabwe – he was convicted of
illegally attempting to buy arms, though the rest of the 90 arrested
with him were acquitted or found guilty of minor offences – the Malabo
case risked becoming a sideshow.

Equatorial Guinea wants Mr Thatcher and Mr Mann to be extradited
but it has received little encouragement from the South Africans or
the Zimbabweans.

Like Britain, South Africa refuses to send suspects to countries
that retain the death penalty, although it may allow lawyers from
Equatorial Guinea to question Sir Mark in Cape Town. But the whole
affair has already drawn more attention to this tropical dictatorship,
which consists of a few lush volcanic islands and a jungle-covered
strip of the African mainland, than it has enjoyed since the Spanish
loosened their grip in the 1960s.

President Obiang appears to be revelling in it. Yesterday he summoned
the foreign press for what turned out to be little more than an
opportunity for him to be photographed giving them an audience. The
men on trial, he told us, were “individuals without morals who
attempted a crime against our country which would have resulted in
blood being spilt”.

But since he deposed and executed his despotic uncle in 1979, the
President has been accused of spilling plenty of blood on his own
account, and even of eating the testicles of his murdered enemies to
imbibe their masculinity.

The accused were not in the courtroom to hear the debate that will
prolong their uncertainty. But a door to their holding room was ajar
as they were told the news, and one could see the looks of defeat
as they shuffled back out to the prison vehicles, a young soldier
clapping his hands to speed them up.

Mr Mico, their defence lawyer, said: “All the accused apart from Mr
du Toit have told me they were tortured.” Belinda du Toit, who says
her drawn, grey-bearded husband was once the same, ample shape as her,
looked on wondering when she would see him again.