Agence France Presse — English
December 12, 2004 Sunday 11:23 AM GMT
German who died in Equatorial Guinea was tortured: report
BERLIN Dec 12
A German who died in March in Equatorial Guinea’s notorious Black
Beach prison, where he was held on suspicion of involvement in a coup
plot, had been tortured, a South African who was in jail with him
said in an interview published in the Frankfurter Rundschau daily.
Officials in Equatorial Guinea said on March 18 that Gerhard Eugen
Merz, a logistics expert who worked for a German air freight company
in the Equatorial Guinea capital Malabo, had died of cerebral malaria
just over a week after being arrested along with 14 other suspected
putsch plotters.
But one of Merz’s co-accused, South African Mark Schmidt, told the
Frankfurter Rundschau in a report published on Saturday that the
German had been “beaten and burned on the soles of his feet” in the
few days he was in jail.
According to the paper, Merz’s body was repatriated to Germany in
June and the prosecutor’s office in Frankfurt had ordered a
post-mortem to be carried out to determine the cause of death.
But the prosecutor’s office has refused to say if the post-mortem
showed that Merz had been tortured, and even months after the
autopsy, has said its investigations are still ongoing, said the
paper.
“Incredible,” was Schmidt’s reaction in the paper.
“Didn’t they see the burn marks on Gerhard’s feet? The scrapes on the
tibia and the large scar on his chest?” he asked.
Schmidt dismissed reports that Merz had died of malaria.
“I’ve had malaria four times. The symptoms are completely different,”
he said.
Schmidt was released from prison last week after spending nine months
behind bars.
German-born Schmidt was one of three South Africans who were
acquitted late last month of plotting to oust President Teodoro
Obiang Nguema of Equatorial Guinea. Five South Africans and six
Armenians were given stiff jail sentences, as were an Equatorial
Guinean opposition leader and members of his government-in-exile.
During his time in jail, Schmidt said that he and his co-detainees
“all became religious and prayed four times a day.
“Otherwise, we would not have been able to stand the beatings, the
disease,” he told the paper.