Cameroonian authorities have detained two police officers accused of kidnapping a political refugee and handing him over to neighbouring Equatorial Guinea, where he faces a 30-year jail sentence, a police official said. The two police officers detained were accused of kidnapping Cipriano Nguema Mba, on October 8 and driving him to Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Yaounde, the official said.
He was Equatorial Guinea's former army paymaster and was registered with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Yaounde, where he had been granted political asylum, the official said. "We've had no news of him since he was abducted. We don't even know whether he is alive or dead," the official told Reuters in Cameroon's capital Yaounde late on Friday.
Staff at Equatorial Guinea's embassy in Yaounde, and at the UNHCR office in the city declined to comment on Mba's case. Mba was one of 23 people sentenced to 12-30 years in jail for their role in an alleged 2004 coup plot against President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo in a trial branded unfair by London-based Amnesty International.
Mba, accused of being the ringleader of the plot, was also accused of absconding with money meant to pay soldiers in 2003. Amnesty said at the time all but two of the defendants had stated in court that they had been tortured in detention and some still bore visible marks, including one man who had to be carried in and out of court as he was unable to walk.
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