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: JURIST - The Paper Chase

Equatorial Guinea court sentences 7 Nigerians for palace attack

By Bernard Hibbitts (editor) and University of Pittsburgh School of Law students.

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[JURIST] An Equatorial Guinea court on Monday sentenced seven Nigerians to 12 years in prison for a 2009 attack on the presidential palace. Court president Antonio Pascual Ojo Ebobo found the Nigerians guilty of terrorism and said they would be fined 149 million CFA francs (USD $310,000). The Nigerians, along with 11 Equatorial Guineans, were arrested after a February 2009 attack on Equatorial Guinea's presidential palace in Malabo. Security forces stopped the Nigerian gunmen, alleged members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger River Delta (MEND), who were supposedly guided by locals on mobile phones. The court also released four additional Equatorial Guineans, all members of the opposition People's Union Party, after freeing seven last month for a lack of evidence. Equatorial Guinea has a history of coups. Last year, former British military officer with the elite Special Air Service, Simon Mann, convicted in 2008 of involvement in a 2004 coup attempt, was released from prison after being pardoned by President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. Mann was arrested in 2004 after a plane carrying him and approximately 60 mercenaries landed in Zimbabwe. Admitting his involvement in planning the coup, Mann was sentenced in 2004 in Zimbabwe for weapons charges, and was deported to Equatorial Guinea in secret in February 2007. At his trial, Mann testified that Mark Thatcher, the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, was involved in the plot to overthrow Mbasogo. Thatcher pleaded guilty in South Africa in 2005 to charges related to the failed coup. The last successful coup in Equatorial Guinea was when the current president Mbasogo toppled his uncle in 1979.

Full post as published by JURIST - The Paper Chase on April 06, 2010 (boomark / email).