The Government of Equatorial Guinea has affirmed that the Equatoguinean opposition leader Julio Obama Mefuman, who had Spanish citizenship, died «due to an illness» in a hospital in the town of Mongomo and stressed that he was sentenced after «a fair trial».
«We inform the international community that Julio Obama Mefuman, an Equatoguinean who participated in the thwarted coup attempt of December 27, 2017 and who received a fair trial, has died in a hospital in Mongomo because of an illness he had been suffering from,» said the Equatoguinean Foreign Minister, Simeon Oyono Esono.
«Equatorial Guinea wishes to deny the information published by the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, because it is unfounded. We therefore express our deepest condolences to his family for this irreparable loss,» said the Minister of Equatorial Guinea through his account on the social network Twitter.
Malabo’s reaction came after the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation summoned on Monday the head of the Equatorial Guinean delegation in Madrid to ask for clarification of the circumstances of the death of the opponent.
Obama Mefuman died on Sunday in the prison of Oveng Azem (Mongomo), where he was held together with Feliciano Efa Mangue, also a Spaniard, according to his party, the Movement for the Liberation of Equatorial Guinea Third Republic (MLGE3R). His death took place less than two weeks after it became known that the National Court is investigating three high officials of Teodoro Obiang Nguema’s government, one of them his son, in relation to the alleged kidnapping and subsequent torture of these two Spaniards.
The four were captured in Juba, the capital of South Sudan, on November 15, 2019 and subsequently transferred in a presidential plane to Equatorial Guinea. Here, in addition to being tortured, they were sentenced to long prison terms, 90 years in the case of Efa Mangue and 70 years in the case of Obama Mefuman, for their alleged participation in an attempted coup d’état.
Source: (EUROPA PRESS)
