Investigation for alleged torture: Equatorial Guinea accuses Spain of interference

Equatorial Guinea's vice-president and all-powerful son of the head of state, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, has accused Spain of "

" after justice in Madrid opened an investigation into "

" and "

" of two opponents of Spanish nationality in Malabo.

This investigation, revealed on Tuesday by the Spanish daily

and confirmed to AFP in Madrid by a judicial source, targets three relatives of Equatoguinean President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, 80 years old and in power since 1979.

They are Carmelo Ovono Obiang, head of the Foreign Intelligence Service and one of the sons of the Head of State, Nicolás Obama Nchama, Minister of National Security, as well as the Director General of Presidential Security, Isaac Nguema Endo.

They are among the most senior security officials in this small Central African oil state among the most closed in the world and endowed with one of the most authoritarian regimes.

Suspicions of torture

The three men are suspected by this Madrid court of having had four opponents who had arrived from Spain kidnapped in South Sudan at the end of 2019, including two Spanish citizens of Equatorial Guinean origin, of having forcibly repatriated them to Malabo and repeatedly tortured, says the newspaper, which says it had access to Spanish police reports.

"

" under an "

" issued by Malabo, Vice President Obiang said in a tweet dated Tuesday evening, nicknamed Teodorin, who accuses Spain of "

".

On November 15, 2019, four opponents of the Obiang regime, all residing in Spain and two of whom hold the nationality of this country (Feliciano Efa Mangue and Julio Obama Mefuman), had been "

" a few days after their arrival in South Sudan , "

", was alarmed on January 8, 2020 Amnesty International in a press release.

The four were members of the Movement for the Liberation of the Third Republic of Equatorial Guinea (MLGE3R), a political opposition movement in exile in Spain.

Convictions of opponents in 2020

Efa Mangue and Obama Mefuman were sentenced in March 2020 in Malabo to 90 and 60 years in prison respectively, for having participated in an "

" against President Obiang in December 2017. A year earlier, 112 accused , including these four in absentia, had been sentenced to decades in prison for the same facts.

According to

, they were arrested in Juba by South Sudanese soldiers and put on the "

" bound for Equatorial Guinea, together with the other two members of MLGE3R legally residing in Spain, Bienvenido Ndong Ondo and Martín Obiang Wave.

According to

, which cites accounts from "

" and a Spanish police report, the four were allegedly subjected to cruel torture sessions in Malabo to which the three senior security officials targeted by the Madrid investigation "

”.