The president of Equatorial Guinea will reportedly only release two South African detainees if two court-seized properties in Cape Town are returned to his son.
Also read: Petition launched for release of WC men detained in Equatorial Guinea
Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham are two South African engineers who were imprisoned on ‘trumped-up’ charges of drug trafficking last year. They were convicted in June 2023, each sentenced to 12 years in prison.
In their campaign on the petition platform Change.org, their families called for the assistance of the South African and UK governments, as Huxham has dual nationality.
‘They were scheduled to return home to South Africa the next morning after a five-week work rotation for their employer, a global oil and gas company. They never came home, and are still in prison in that country, for a crime they never committed,’ the petition reads.
‘Frik and Peter are innocent of these charges and have been caught in a diplomatic battle between South Africa and Equatorial Guinea.’
‘Tragically, Frik and Peter are political pawns, being held as state hostages in retaliation for South Africa’s seizure of the Vice President of Equatorial Guinea’s luxury assets. They are innocent and were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
Just two days before they were arrested, a South African court ordered the seizure of a luxury superyacht belonging to Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang (the president’s son), shortly after two of Obiang’s luxury Cape Town villas were seized as part of a liquidation process. This process was necessary to help recover damages owed to another South African, Daniel van Rensburg, who was imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea in 2011.
He spent nearly 500 days in the Black Beach Prison, after which he claimed and won nearly R40 million in damages from Vice-President Obiang. At the time, he claimed that Obiang had ordered his private security forces to arrest him after a joint airline venture with a member of the Obiang family turned sour.
Although the yacht was later released, the two houses remain attached.
In May, South Africa’s former Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor visited the central African country, asking for the release of Potgieter and Huxham.
According to a ministerial statement, Pandor raised ‘concerns regarding the incarceration of two South African citizens in the country’ and noted that the two countries were engaging on the matter.
However, Daily Maverick sources revealed that President Obiang ‘bluntly’ told Pandor that Potgieter and Huzham would not be released unless the Clifton and Bishopscourt houses were released to his son.
Earlier this month, the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention rejected the drug charges against Potgieter and Huxham, labelling the pair’s detention as arbitrary and illegal. It also called for their immediate release.
‘The deprivation of liberty of Mr Huxham and Mr Potgieter is arbitrary in that it is contrary to Articles 3, 9, 10 and 11 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Articles 9, 14 and 15 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and falls within categories I and III,’ the UN group said.
According to the group, Potgieter and Huxham are innocent of the drug charges and their detention is a grave violation of various international human rights conventions.
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Picture: Change.org
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