Equatorial Guinea: six soldiers are detained at Bata airport

Published on : 07/29/2021 – 15:35Modified : 07/29/2021 – 15:37

While making a regular stopover, six French soldiers were detained, Thursday July 29, at the airport of Bata, the economic capital of Equatorial Guinea, after having landed their helicopter the day before to refuel, said the French army and the state radio of this small country in Central Africa.

“They landed at 2:15 p.m. on Wednesday because they had run out of oil. At that point a string of red tape began,” Colonel Pascal Ianni, spokesman for the AFP, told AFP. French Armed Forces staff, adding that they were still waiting for an authorization to take off again.

“We are in a negotiation phase” with the local authorities, he continued. “We are faced with an incident such as we have already known. They hold the helicopter and the crew,” he also said.

The soldiers questioned by the Equatorial Guinean police

Thursday evening, the TVGE, Equatorial Guinean state radio, had affirmed that this helicopter had landed without authorization. The French soldiers were then heard at the central police station in Bata, she added.

“The national authorities do not exclude that this military incident is an operation of espionage and provocation of Paris”, also assured the TVGE.

“There is no espionage affair,” assured Pascal Ianni for his part. “We have all the necessary authorizations,” said a French military official on condition of anonymity.

“We stop regularly in Bata, but we also regularly have coordination problems with Bata airport. The control tower does not give permission to land out of excess of zeal,” he added. .

The helicopter stuck in Bata is of the Fennec type, unarmed. He was providing a logistical link between Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, and Libreville, the capital of Gabon, which houses the military base of the French Elements in Gabon, located in the south of Equatorial Guinea.

Vice-President of Equatorial Guinea sentenced in France

On Wednesday, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, nicknamed Teodorin, vice-president of this Central African country ruled without division by his father for 42 years, was definitively condemned by French justice for having fraudulently constituted a luxurious heritage in a shutter of the case of “ill-gotten gains”, after the rejection of his appeal by the Court of Cassation.

Teodorin Obiang, 52, was sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal in February 2020 to three years in prison, a 30 million euros fine and the confiscation of all his property seized for “money laundering of corporate assets, embezzlement of public funds and breach of trust “between 1997 and 2011. He appealed against this decision.

On Monday, Equatorial Guinea announced the closure of its embassy in London after sanctions, considered by Malabo as “illegal”, imposed for acts of corruption by the United Kingdom against Teodorin Obiang.

With AFP