ABAHA TV|| Los servicios secretos del dictador han secuestrado a 34 disidentes entre 1997 y 2019

Teodoro Obiang Nguema, president of Equatorial Guinea, pursues and kidnaps his opponents to the farthest corner of the planet. A confidential report by the General Police Information Commission (CGI), as well as work by various NGOs, the UN, and the US State Department, conclude that the dictator's secret services kidnapped 34 dissidents between 1997 and 2019. Paying African hitmen or collaborators and using the presidential plane as a diplomatic shield to transport their victims to Malabo are the common pattern of these kidnappings. Some opponents were executed, others have disappeared, according to reports from a police investigation to which EL PAÍS has had access. All the kidnappings bear a striking similarity to that of the four opponents, two of them Spanish, abducted in South Sudan in 2019, the last on the gruesome list. For this kidnapping, the National Court has just ordered the arrest of Carmelo Ovono Obiang, Secretary of State to the Presidency and son of the president, the Minister of the Interior, and the Director General of Security. Spanish, Italian, and Belgian police are working together to investigate several cases. Examining Obiang's relentless persecution of his opponents in exile is a walk through horror. In each story, traps, deceptions, or false job offers emerge to lure his victims to African countries where hitmen or local police, in exchange for money, kidnapped the opponents and took them to the Guinean embassy. From there, in diplomatic cars, they were taken to the presidential plane, ending up in the sinister Black Beach prison in Malabo, a black hole where abuse, torture, and humidity force prisoners to live in appalling conditions. The current president was warden of this hell before overthrowing his uncle, Francisco Macías. The final episode concludes with unfair military trials, in which they are sentenced to terms ranging from 30 to 90 years in prison. Diazepan and Valium Overdose In 2005, Juan Ondo Abaga, a former Navy commander, had been a refugee for eight years in Cotonou, the capital of the Republic of Benin, under the protection of the government and the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). A Beninese man who had befriended him convinced him to travel to a town on the border with Nigeria, where he would introduce him to an investor for a potential business deal. They slept together in a hotel, and during dinner, with the complicity of the hotel's owners, they anesthetized him with an overdose of Diazepan and Valium. Obiang's agents transported his unconscious body to Nigeria and drove him to the residence of the Guinean ambassador in Abuja, the capital. The dictator's presidential plane was waiting at the airport. The Nigerian police questioned his kidnappers about the identity of the man they were carrying on a stretcher. They identified him as a member of the presidential entourage and argued that the transfer was urgent for health reasons. Juan Ondo ended up in Black Beach prison. Thanks to international pressure, he was released three years later. Murder in Ivory Coast Anastasio Bita Rope Lope sought refuge in Ivory Coast after the popular uprising of January 1998, in which Bubi activists confronted the dictatorship and attacked Guinean police posts. Bita, a member of the Bubi ethnic group, fled Bioko Island by boat and began a new life away from activism. Eight years later, on February 4, 2006, two men claiming to be police officers showed up at his home in Abidjan, the economic capital of Ivory Coast, where he lived with his wife, and asked him to accompany them. No one knew his address except for officials at the Spanish embassy in that country who were helping them. Two days later, his body was found with two gunshot wounds. Calls from his wife to the director general of security, explaining the sinister visit, were unsuccessful in locating the hitmen. It is believed that, given the police presence and the difficulty of getting him out of the country, the killers opted to execute him. Anastasio Bita Rope was the most wanted Bubi activist by the dictator's regime. Diplomatic porter and double kidnapping The case of Cipiriano Nguema UMba is an example of the extent of Obiang's obsession with persecuting his opponents. This former lieutenant colonel was kidnapped twice. His story is one of relentless persecution. A hunt that began when he fled to Cameroon in December 2003, where he obtained political asylum. The response was a trial in absentia, denounced by Amnesty International, in which he was sentenced to 30 years in prison. Article published on April 1, 2024, by EL PAÍS. Reproduced by ABAHA TV