Carmelo Ovono Obiang, Secretary of State for the Presidency and son of President Teodoro Obiang Nguema, has not appeared at the judicial summons by videoconference to which he had been summoned this Tuesday morning by Judge Santiago Pedraz at the National Court, as indicated judicial sources.
Nicolás Obama, Minister of the Interior and Isaac Nguema Endo, Director of Security, did not appear at the statement taking.
The three members of the Equatorial Guinean security leadership are being investigated as alleged perpetrators of the kidnapping and torture of four opponents of the dictator's regime, one of whom died on January 15 in circumstances that have not been clarified.
The dictator's son had managed to evade his face-to-face statement in Spain alleging "public commitments" that prevent him from traveling and the "disproportion of having a high-ranking government representative come to make demonstrations," according to his lawyer.
Despite the opposition of the prosecutor Vicente González Mota and the representation of the complainants, the magistrate had granted them the possibility of declaring by videoconference from their country.
But this morning the Ovono Obiang lawyer has announced that they will not appear and the three have stood up to Judge Pedraz.
Possible search and capture order
The non-appearance of those investigated will foreseeably cause the prosecution and the plaintiffs, the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea III Republic (MLGE 3R), to consider asking the judge to declare them in absentia.
This situation may lead to the issuance of an international search and capture order given the seriousness of the facts for which they are being investigated.
The refusal of Carmelo Ovono Obiang to testify to Spain confirms what the complainants, the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea III Republic (MLGE 3R), police investigators and other legal sources predicted last January when Judge Pedraz He renounced the police detention of Obiang's son and his taking an immediate statement.
They all ventured that they would evade his judicial statement, just as his half-brother Teodorín Obiang did before the French courts where he was convicted of money laundering in the case of ill-acquired assets.
On December 29, the agents of the General Information Commissioner who were investigating the case informed the magistrate that the head of Foreign Security of Equatorial Guinea was sleeping in a hotel in Madrid where he was being watched.
Against the discretion of the Prosecutor's Office, the judge ordered that he be given a copy of the complaint and that he appoint a lawyer.
That same morning, Ovono Obiang took a plane to Malabo.
He has not returned despite Spanish soil.
Weeks before, when the agents were waiting for him at the Madrid-Barajas airport, Pedraz had requested his police arrest, transfer to the court and that his mobile phone and any electronic device be confiscated.
Resident in Spain
Despite the fact that the defense of Obiang's son affirms that he is not a resident in Spain, Ovono Obiang, Alis
Didi
, 44, is married to a Spanish woman, has a daughter and has been a resident in Spain since 2020. His resident card requires him to live in Spain for more than six months.
He lives in Marbella, although he travels frequently to Malabo, owns homes in Barcelona and Toledo, and manages the Spanish company for alleged real estate activities Dereck Edita y Hermanos SL in Malaga.
The main indications against the son of the dictator and the other two heads of Guinean national security are based, among other evidence, on the testimonies of two protected witnesses, one of whom was present during the torture suffered by Spanish opponents Feliciano Efa Mangué and Julio Obama, and the Equatorial Guineans residing in Madrid, Bienvenido Ndong and Martín Obiang.
One of these protected witnesses fled from Equatorial Guinea with the evidence presented at the National Court.
The four were kidnapped in 2019 by deceit in Juva, the capital of South Sudan, transferred to a prison in Equatorial Guinea and tried and sentenced to 60 and 90 years in prison, in a trial without guarantees for an alleged coup d'état. , as reported by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.
Obama, 61, recently passed away.
Judge Pedraz, the Spanish Government and the European Parliament have unsuccessfully demanded that his body be repatriated to Spain in order to carry out an autopsy.
