TRIAL OF ARMENIAN PILOTS IN EQUATORIAL GUINEA TO RESUME IN EARLY OCTOBER
ArmenPress
Sept 7 2004
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 7, ARMENPRESS: In an exclusive interview with
Armenpress Armenian ambassador to Egypt, Sergey Manaserian, recently
back from Equatorial Guinea where he attended the trial of six
Armenian pilots, arrested on charges of involvement in an alleged
coup to oust that country’s president Teodoro Obiang Nguema, said
the trial, started on August 23, was suspended for one month.
He said Equatorial Guinea’s chief prosecutor, national security
minister and high officials of the foreign ministry used to say
that the trial would not run for more than 3-4 days, an opinion
that was also shared by lawyers and locally deployed diplomats and
representatives from the South African Republic.
Manaserian said the South African Nick du Toit, accused of attempting
to oust the president, was the only one of 19 arrested people for
whom prosecutors demanded death punishment. He was also the sole
who admitted to plotting the coup, saying he was to meet the team
of mercenaries and direct their further moves. He at the same time
insisted that other arrested 7 South Africans had no connection with
the plot and were just fulfilling his instructions.
Manaserian said Armenian pilots were questioned on the third day of
the trial and the prosecutors’ questions referred to their February
17 flight to Zambia. Their answers made obvious that they had no
relations to the implicated charges. Nick du Toit in his turn said
he had no relations with Armenian pilots (one of the charges was
that Armenians received money from South Africans). Their answers
were clear and definite despite the prosecutors’ attempts to find
any discrepancy in their testimonies.
Manaserian said that despite expectations that the presiding judge
will issue his ruling on August 30, he announced about adjourning the
trial for one month, as was requested by prosecutors, for collection
of additional evidence. The ruling was protested by lawyers, who cited
several international conventions, but without any effect. The trial
is most likely to resume between October 1 and 7.
The ambassador also criticized some Armenian mass media for distorted
coverage of the case, which he said was sometimes jeopardizing the
pilots’ fate. He also expressed his bewilderment that not a single
Armenian mass media sent a journalist to follow the trial in Malabo,
the capital of Equatorial Guinea.
According to the ambassador, no evidence was unveiled at the trial to
implicate Armenian pilots’ involvement in the plot, which he said was
a serious basis for optimism, but added that “we have to wait until
the end of the trial.”
On Monday Armenia’s foreign ministry denied a report by Agence France
Presse that a team of investigators from Equatorial Guinea arrived in
Yerevan to gather more information about six Armenian pilots accused
of involvement in the alleged plot. Agence France Presse quoted an
unnamed `legal official’ in the country’s capital Malabo as saying
that the investigators flew to Armenia to probe links between the
suspected coup plotters and an Armenian airline whose pilots have
been kept in Equato-Guinean custody since March.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress