1674151891 Pedraz is demanding the return of the body of the

Pedraz is demanding the return of the body of the enemy who died in Equatorial Guinea for an autopsy

Teodoro Obiang, President of Equatorial Guinea, in an official speech last December.  (Photo by AFP)Teodoro Obiang, President of Equatorial Guinea, in an official speech last December. (Photo by AFP)-(AFP)

Santiago Pedraz, head of the National Court of Inquiry Number Five, has called on the Directorate-General for Consular Affairs to demand the safekeeping and repatriation of the body of Julio Obama, 61, a detained Spanish opponent, from Equatorial Guinea to a Mongomo prison and died on March 15 January under unclear circumstances. The transfer of the body would facilitate an autopsy to clarify the causes of death. A judge-led investigation alleges that Obama and three other members of an opposition movement against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s regime were kidnapped, tortured and tried without guarantees over an alleged coup d’état against the leader.

Pedraz is also asking the State Department agency to include him in the investigation “about the health and whereabouts of the other three victims.” They are Feliciano Efa Mangue, 43, and Madrid-based Equatorial Guineans Martin Obiang Mbasogo, 45, and Bienvenido Ndong Ondo, 43. The three were kidnapped along with Julio Obama by fraud in Juba (Sudan del Sur) in Malabo on Obiang’s presidential plane and in Malabo Sentenced to 60 to 90 years in prison in a trial contested by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

More information

The judge’s request echoes the “urgent” request of the General Police Information Station, the unit investigating the case, that the body be preserved for forensic examination and repatriated as soon as possible. The prosecutor of the case, Vicente González Mota, has also supported this claim. Equatorial Guinea authorities have issued a death certificate showing Obama died of pulmonary tuberculosis and other diseases.

The document ensures that he was transferred from the prison where he had been serving a sentence since 2020 to the Virgen de Guadalupe Clinic and “referred to the Mongomo Province Hospital to begin his treatment immediately”. According to this certificate, he stayed there for a week and “because of the clinical deterioration, he was taken to the La Paz de Bata hospital, where he stayed for a week”. The medical certificate indicates that despite his seriousness, he was released and taken back to the hospital, very weak, where he died twenty-four hours later. The official date of death is the 15th at 12:30 p.m.

The government has asked Equatorial Guinea to investigate the death of its Spanish opponent and asked for a pardon for Feliciano Efa Mangue, who has also been sentenced to 90 years in prison. This week, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs summoned the head of the embassy delegation in Spain to express concern about the fate of the prisoners and ask him to investigate the facts. Julio Obama, a member of the Movement for the Liberation of the Republic of Equatorial Guinea III (MLGE 3R), remained a prisoner in a Mongomo prison in a tiny underground cell, slept on a cement bed with no natural light or air and was fed food in poor condition, so the eyewitnesses who testified in the case being prosecuted in the National Court. Among other tortures, he was subjected to the so-called “crocodile” torture, in which the prisoner is hung upside down from a long pole with his hands and feet held in shackles to cause blood vessels to rupture due to his weight and body.

What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.

Subscribe to

Subscribe to continue reading

Read without limits