YAOUNDE, CAMEROON — Cameroonian authorities will try two policemen for allegedly kidnapping a senior Equatorial Guinea military official who was wanted in connection with a coup plot there, police officials said today.
Col. Cipriano Nguema Mba had lived in exile in Cameroon since 2004, when he fled his native Equatorial Guinea in the wake of a failed coup plot to overthrow Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang.
In 2005, a court in Equatorial Guinea sentenced Mba to 30 years in prison for playing a part in the failed putsch.
Earlier this month, the two policemen captured Mba in Cameroon and handed him over to Equatorial Guinea officials in the country, according to several senior police officials who declined to be named in accordance with laws prohibiting government employees to talk to the media.
Mba’s whereabouts are not known and Equatorial Guinea officials were unavailable to comment on the case. No date has been set for the policemen’s trial.
Obiang seized power in oil-rich Equatorial Guinea in a 1979 coup.
