Pedraz expels from the case the defense of Obiang's son investigated for torture after standing him up
The judge of the National Court Santiago Pedraz has expelled the defense of Carmelo Ovono Obiang from the case in which he is being investigated for the alleged kidnapping and torture of two Guineans who are Spanish nationals.
The reason for this decision is that Carmelo Ovono, son of the dictator of Equatorial Guinea Teodoro Obiang, refused to appear before Pedraz on March 28. He was not the only one who did it: Isaac Nguema, deputy director of Security of the Presidency of Equatorial Guinea and also investigated, did not appear either.
In a recent letter, to which EL ESPAÑOL has had access, Pedraz confirms that the latter, a senior official in the Government of Teodoro Obiang, “since he is not available to the Court, he must lose the status of a person.”. And that is the same situation in which Carmelo Ovono Obiang finds himself.
[Police accuse Obiang's son of creating a company in Spain to spy on dissidents]
On March 28, both had to testify before the Central Court of Instruction number 5 , whose owner is Santiago Pedraz. Both Ovono and Nguema requested to be interrogated by videoconference and the magistrate accepted it.. But neither of them connected to the video call at the scheduled time.
For this reason, they were declared in absentia and have now lost their status as parties to this proceeding.. This decision is relevant, since they will not be able to file appeals or request the Court to carry out proceedings. To do so, they should make themselves available to Justice, which opens the door so that, if they do, they can enter pretrial detention.
The third person investigated in this case is Nicolás Obama, Minister of Equatorial Guinea. The latter did not come to testify either, with the exception that he had not requested that his interrogation be held by videoconference.. In his case, Pedraz warns him that if he does not appear in court, he may suffer the same fate as the rest of those investigated.
Carmelo Ovono
Ovono Obiang, in addition to being the son of the president of the African country, is in charge of Equatorial Guinea's Intelligence abroad. Pedraz investigates him for allegedly having kidnapped and subsequently brutally tortured four people. Two of them had Spanish ID and had served in the Armed Forces of our country.
This judicial case began with the admission for processing of a complaint filed by the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea Third Republic (MLGE3R), an opponent of the Obiang regime, which governs the former Spanish colony with an iron fist.
The MLGE3R points out that the three investigated kidnapped in 2019 in South Sudan Julio Obama and Feliciano Efa, two Guineans nationalized Spanish. The first died recently in an Equatorial Guinean prison, shortly after, once the Spanish Justice notified the defendants of the complaint, they could return to the African country. The Movement suspects that Obama's death was “retaliation.”
A report from the General Information Commissioner (CGI) of the National Police included in the summary of this case, to which EL ESPAÑOL had access, confirms that Carmelo Ovono Obiang and the other two investigated —Nicolás Obama and Isaac Nguema— used a plane president to commit the alleged kidnapping.
The National Police also accuses Ovono of exercising a “systematic” repression against opponents of his father's regime abroad. Even the CGI ensures that created a company in Spain to camouflage surveillance and monitoring who coordinated against political dissidents.
Once Ovono was located in Madrid, Judge Pedraz, instructor of the case, modified his previous criterion —before, he had ordered the Police to arrest him— and opted only to notify him of the MLGE3R complaint.
The Spanish Foreign Ministry also has requested information from the Equatoguinean authorities on the death of Julio Obama. And Pedraz has ordered the repatriation of the body to perform an autopsy. At the moment, the remains have not been sent to Spain.