Equa-Guinea legal team in Armenia to probe links to coup plot
Agence France Presse — English
September 4, 2004 Saturday 12:58 PM GMT
MALABO Sept 4 — A legal team from Equatorial Guinea is in Armenia
to probe links between a local air transport company and an alleged
plot to oust President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, an official said here
Saturday.
The focus of the Equato-Guinean investigators’ visit to the central
Asian country was a contract between Armenia’s Tiger Air and a German
company whose representative in Malabo, Gerhard Eugen Merz, was among
15 foreigners arrested in Equatorial Guinea in March and accused of
plotting a coup, the legal official said.
Merz died days after his arrest, officially from cerebral malaria,
but with rights groups saying he was tortured to death.
Among those arrested were the six Armenian air crew of an Antonov
cargo plane. All six have denied involvement in the alleged coup bid,
and told a court in Malabo that they had come to Equatorial Guinea to
work under contract to Merz’s company, which had leased their plane
and services.
The Antonov and its Armenian crew arrived in Equatorial Guinea in
January this year.
Between then and the discovery of the alleged coup plot in March they
made only one flight, on behalf of a company owned by South African
businessman Nick du Toit, who faces the death penalty for allegedly
leading the coup bid.