Financiers conspired to overthrow oil-flush African government

[Snazzy]

Published: Aug 23, 2004
Modified: Aug 23, 2004 4:32 PM

Financiers conspired to overthrow oil-flush African government, alleged ringleader says

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MALABO, Equatorial Guinea (AP) - Financiers in Europe and Africa were behind a plot to overthrow the government of Africa's No. 3 oil producer, an accused ringleader testified Monday at the opening of Africa's biggest mercenary trial in decades.

Equatorial Guinea accuses 89 alleged mercenaries of signing on to a $5 million plot to oust President Teodoro Obiang, who has ruled this repressed, isolated nation since executing his uncle in 1979 to succeed him in power.

...

Seventy suspects are on trial separately in Zimbabwe, where they were arrested March 6. A 90th defendant, a German, died in prison here after what Amnesty International said was suspected torture.

...

Mann, the top planner, "told me that the Spanish government would recognize the Moto government, and that it had the blessing of some American higher-up politicians," du Toit testified, in handcuffs and leg chains.

....

http://newsobserver.com/24hour/world/story/1594474p-9227125c.html

Earlier:

"Mercenaries" go on trial in Equatorial Guinea
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=770620

[Snazzy]

1. US military commander to visit African oil producers

GABON-SAO TOME AND PRINCIPE: US military commander to visit African oil producers

IRINnews Africa, Mon 23 Aug 2004

LIBREVILLE, - A senior US military commander and an influential Republican senator will visit oil-producing Gabon and the potentially oil-rich state of Sao Tome and Principe this week to discuss security, oil and environmental issues, a US embassy spokeswoman said on Monday.

The US delegation, led by General Charles Wald, the deputy commander of US forces in Europe, and Chuck Hagle, a Republican senator from Nebraska who sits on the Senate's foreign affairs and intelligence committees, would arrive in Libreville on Tuesday for talks with President Omar Bongo, she told IRIN.

...

Shortly after Wald's (edit: last) visit US instructors were reported to be training Nigerian counter-insurgency troops in the oil producing Niger Delta. This area has been plagued by skirmishing between ethnic militias and by the wholesale theft of crude oil by organised gangs in recent years.

...

Oil production has been declining in recent years in staunchly pro-western Gabon. It currently averages about 250,000 barrels per day. However, the country lies close to two rising stars in the African oil industry - Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome and Principe.

Equatorial Guinea, which the US Department of Energy lists as the third largest recipient of US investment in Africa after South Africa and Nigeria, produces 350,000 barrels of oil per day and will shortly become a major gas producer.

....

http://www.africadaily.com/p/e5/6debe411a786a7.html?id=WNAT44c27af141254ca8bb7f326b6b55cc3a

--------

EQUATORIAL GUINEA: No translator for 14 suspected mercenaries as trial opens

IRINnews Africa, Mon 23 Aug 2004

...

The authorities originally arrested 15 foreigners in connection with the alleged mercenary invasion plot, but one of them, a German called Gerhard Eugen Nershz, died a few days later.

The government said he died from an attack of cerebral malaria. Amnesty International quoted eye witnesses who had seen the German's corpse as saying he was tortured to death.

Du Toit, the alleged leader of the mercenary group inside Equatorial Guinea, is a former South African military officer who was once closely connected to the now defunct South African security company Executive Outcomes. The company supplied private guards to multinational oil and mining companies and mercenary combatants to several governments, including Angola and Sierra Leone.

The six Armenians on trial are the flight crew of an Antonov 12 cargo plane belonging to the small company Tiga Air, which operated in several countries in Central Africa.

....

http://www.africadaily.com/p/7f/13baddb5faa592.html?id=WNAT9a27e665f361e94feb4ee32f289d600c

[bahrbearian]

3. So we send in the Military instead of a Diplomat ?

Start out Threating them from the get-go.

[goforit]

9. Yep and it won't be for WMDs either.

[Snazzy]

6. Choppers lift staff at fire-hit Gabonese presidential palace

Choppers lift staff at fire-hit Gabonese presidential palace


Libreville, Gabon, 08/25 - Two helicopters were busy evacuating staff at the seaside Presidential Palace here hit by fire in the early afternoon of Tuesday.

One European national, who apparently sustained injury, was among workers in the vast building airlifted by the rescue helicopters, according to eyewitnesses.

A thick cloud of smoke could be seen about one kilometre away from the palace, where repairs works have been going on for several months now.

The cause of the fire has not yet been determined.

But the incident occurred when President Omar Bongo Ondimba was slated to receive a visiting US delegation led by Senator Chuck Hagle and the deputy commander of the US forces in Europe, General Charles Wald.

....

http://www.angolapress-angop.ao/noticia-e.asp?ID=276764

Amazing that an apparent attempt to blow up Hagle and one of our supreme commanders is not news. Oh, they're in oil rich Africa, hush-hush.

Edit--a later blurb of the story says it was a short circuit. "Fire-hit" having a slightly dif. meaning. Still, why no media coverage on Hagle/Wald visiting Africa re: energy policy, hmm?

[Snazzy]

2. Death demanded for South African 'mercenary' in E Guinea coup bid

Monday August 23, 08:21 PM

Death demanded for South African 'mercenary' in E Guinea coup bid

MALABO (AFP) - The prosecutor in the case of South African alleged mercenary leader Nick du Toit, who has admitted a limited role in a coup bid in Equatorial Guinea, called for him to be sentenced to death.

...

Du Toit appeared along with seven other South Africans, six Armenians and four Equatorial Guineans, including former deputy economic planning minister Antonio Javier Nguema Nchama, on charges ranging from "crimes against the head of state" to treason and terrorism.

Du Toit implicated exiled opposition leader Severo Moto, head of a "government in exile" in Madrid and accused of masterminding the coup attempt.

"I was told he was in a country very nearby... and that he would be there 30 minutes after the coup."

....

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040823/323/f10bd.html

[seemslikeadream]

10. Career soldier Du Toit had strong links with apartheid military

August 27, 2004

Johannesburg: Nick du Toit, the alleged SA ringleader of a group of coup plotters in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea, is said to have strong links with former soldiers and mercenaries active during the apartheid era.

Du Toit, 48, is on trial in Malabo on charges of conspiring to topple the longtime leader of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema.

The prosecutor this week requested the death penalty for Du Toit and prison terms ranging from 26 to 86 years for his co-accused, including seven other South Africans.

Du Toit is a former member of the SA army's elite Special Task Forces unit who worked in Executive Outcomes, a mercenary outfit set up by Briton Simon Mann in the early 1990s.

Du Toit was reportedly part of an Executive Outcomes mission in Sierra Leone where mercenaries were hired by the Freetown government to fight against rebels.
http://www.capetimes.co.za/index.php?fSectionId=271&fArticleId=2202181

[no_hypocrisy]

4. This sounds like a rejected script for "Dallas" where J.R. plots to

overthrow a third world nation to steal its crude for Ewing Oil.

[TahitiNut]

5. Battling despotism ... like warring crime families

I see nothing liberal or democratic in this power struggle. This is the kind of battle for control of wealth that leaves thousands of innocent civilians dead or more impoverished - the kind of conflict where the US sides with whichever side is more 'cooperative' with privatization and corporate profits.

[seemslikeadream]

7. Twist to the plot

Arms dealer Nick do Toit (above), who is on trial in Malabo for his part in the plot, is the first to name Mark Thatcher in his court testimony. -- AP

Unlike other African coups, this one was planned by British elite in an attempt to get a share of the country's petrodollars

MALABO (Equatorial Guinea) - Hatched by Old Etonians and other members of the British elite, an alleged scheme to seize control of this nation flush with petrodollars was no ordinary African coup plot.


Arms dealer Nick do Toit (above), who is on trial in Malabo for his part in the plot, is the first to name Mark Thatcher in his court testimony. -- AP
The plan: Send in a motley crew of European, Asian and African mercenaries to force out the oil-rich ruler of one of the world's most corrupt regimes and put a more malleable figure in his place.

The prize: Deals with Africa's third-largest oil producer and the hundreds of millions of dollars it earns annually from a West African petroleum boom that has given this nation of 500,000 the world's fastest-growing economy.

But if there was any plot, it went disastrously wrong. And it has left Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher, under house arrest in South Africa.
more
http://straitstimes.asia1.com.sg/world/story/0,4386,269422,00.html

[lottie244]

8. Now you know after Abu Gharib these folks are scared shitless...

taking a cue of Abu Gharib (as if they needed to) any third world nation holding western or Iraq coalition prisoners will feel no qualms about torturing or killing their prisoners.

[struggle4progress]

11. kick for capitalists privatizing foreign policy

:kick: