Feb. 22nd-Update on Equatorial Guinea Situation

16 held in coup effort in Equatorial Guinea
By Lydia Polgreen
Published: February 20, 2009
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DAKAR, Senegal: The last time foreigners tried to topple the government of the tiny, oil-rich nation of Equatorial Guinea, it was a band of upper-crust Britons-turned-mercenaries involved in an elaborate plot, allegedly for a shadowy businessman, in exchange for cash.
On Thursday, officials in Equatorial Guinea said they had arrested 16 men in an equally bizarre but even more mysterious attempt this week to overthrow the government of Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, who has ruled the country, a former Spanish colony, for almost three decades.
Men in speedboats attacked the capital, Malabo, which sits on an island off the West African coastline in the Gulf of Guinea. They struck before dawn on Tuesday and were heavily armed, the government said in a statement, but the army, using boats and a helicopter, quickly repelled the attack.


Diplomats and analysts say the evidence points to a nearer menace than last time: militants from the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Fighters from ethnic minorities in the oil-rich region have carried out insurgencies there for decades, demanding a greater share of the country's oil wealth. In recent years, they have gained steam, carrying out increasingly sophisticated attacks on oil installations far out at sea.

The men who carried out the attack had Nigerian currency and other items that pointed to a Nigerian connection, officials in Equatorial Guinea said. But Nigerian officials said Wednesday that it was too early to say for sure who was responsible.
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"So far, the investigations we have been able to make show that even the authorities in Equatorial Guinea are not yet very certain as to the identity of those who carried out the act," Ojo Maduekwe, Nigeria's foreign minister, told reporters in Abuja.
But officials in Equatorial Guinea said in a statement released Thursday that the men who had been arrested were members of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, the most powerful of the rebel groups operating in the region.
In a statement sent by e-mail to reporters, the spokesman for the group, who goes by the nom de guerre Jomo Gbomo, said the Nigerian government was behind the attack, calling it an attempt "to install a dissident based in Spain as head of state."
Equatorial Guinea is one of Africa's wealthiest but least stable nations. It is one of the continent's largest oil producers, yet it has a history of coup attempts and strife.
In 2004, a group of foreign mercenaries led by Simon Mann, a former British special forces officer, tried to sneak into the country with a cache of weapons to overthrow the government. The attempt was suspected of being at the behest of a rich investor who wanted an ally installed as president.
Mann, who helped found some of Africa's most notorious private, for-profit armies, was convicted last year in Malabo for his role in the plot and sentenced to 34 years in prison.


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