Daily News, South Africa
Nov 30 2004
‘We were waiting for our time’
November 30, 2004
‘And every time he tried to eat, they kicked him in the face. And
then they told him to eat again!”
There’s uproarious laughter as the three men seated in the hotel room
reminisce about the abuse and torture they suffered in Black Beach
prison over the last eight months.
Laughter seems inappropriate, but it is no doubt the laughter of
relief. On Friday a judge acquitted these three – Mark Schmidt,
Americo Ribeiro and Ablo Augusto – on charges of participating in a
plot to topple Equatorial Guinea’s President Teodoro Obiang Nguema in
a coup.
On Saturday afternoon they were free men, talking about their
experiences in a Malabo hotel before getting onto an aircraft on
Sunday to fly home.
Five other South Africans were not so lucky. Nic du Toit, charged
with being the ringleader of the group in Malabo, the country’s
capital, was sentenced to an effective 34 years in prison while the
others – George Alerson, Bone Boonzaaier, Jose Domingos and Sergio
Cardoso – each got an effective 17 years in prison. All were also
fined.
Mark Schmidt, the youngest of the South Africans, describes how he
walked wide-eyed into the catastrophe.
“I was working odd jobs, bringing in a little money. I got word from
Bone (Boonzaaier) that there was work for me (in Equatorial Guinea)
for $1 500 (R8 820). It wasn’t much in dollars, but it was double
what I was earning back home.”
“I saw this place as a good place for business. There was timber,
fishing, farming and transport. There was plenty.”
It all fell apart in the first week of March. “On Saturday the
soldiers and police were very busy all around us. We asked the people
what was going on and they said they were arresting strangers.”
On the morning of Monday, March 8, police surrounded
the house Schmidt and the crew of Armenian pilots were staying in.
“I didn’t think anything of it. I thought it was just the way they
handle transport problems around here,” said Schmidt.
Later that evening the soldiers and police made their move.
“Suddenly there was military everywhere, bursting through doors,
windows, lights everywhere. It was so scary. The soldiers were
reeking of alcohol and they were threatening us with weapons. They
threw me down and put a gun to my head. I thought I was going to die
right there,” said Schmidt.
Equatorial Guinean Minister Antonio Javier Nguema was also present at
the arrests, barking orders at the men. Later he was to join the men
in prison.
That night the men were all taken to Black Beach Prison where they
were thrown to-gether in a 20m x 4m cell with hands cuffed behind
their backs – and with more than 200 other foreigners.
This was to be their home for the next eight months, two weeks and
five days.
“Some of the guys were crying, begging for them to loosen the cuffs.
Every time you turned, even a little bit, the cuffs tightened more.
They’d just say: “Too tight?” Then they’d tighten it some more,” said
Augusto.
That day a cycle of system-atic torture started which was to continue
for 10 days.
Videotaped and beaten incessantly, the men were “encouraged” to tell
the truth. Nic du Toit and George Alerson were kept in separate cells
from the rest of the men for the first two months.
The men were taken in a seemingly random order for questioning with
beatings taking place at any time.
“I smiled and this military guy came up and gave me a moer se klap,”
said Schmidt.
But in a bizarre variation from the harsh treatment, the men were
given takeaway food the first week in jail.
“The food never tasted like anything because you were being beaten
while eating,” said Augusto.
“With your hands cuffed behind your back constantly you can’t do most
things. Not even use the toilet. I had to wipe Bone’s bum for him.
Every time I gave him shit he’d remind me that I wiped his bum,” said
Schmidt, making everybody in the room laugh.
Even washing was a humiliating affair and the first time the men were
allowed to wash was almost two weeks after their initial
incarceration.
Taken outside to a wire fence adjacent to the outside public, they
were stripped naked and with their hands still cuffed behind their
backs, one of the prisoners washed them.
“They took Sergio and Bone to a small, dark room where there is blood
splattered on the walls. I think people have died inside that room,”
said Augusto.
It was here the men say Nic was beaten and Sergio was given electric
shock treatment.
Many of the men were also subjected to torture with a lighter held
under their feet.
During Cardoso and Du Toit’s torture sessions, the second most
powerful and most feared man in Equatorial Guinea, Minister of
Security Manuel Mba, was present, said Augusto.
One group, who worked on a Wednesday, were particularly brutal and
seemed to take especially great delight in beating the men.
“They’d say: ‘Eat!’ So you eat and then, boom! they beat you and kick
your plate over. Then they say: ‘Eat!’ And it happens again and
again,” said Augusto.
Later the men learnt to eat and do everything by keeping their eyes
focused on the ground, never making eye contact which would instantly
be seen as a challenge and provoke an attack.
“If you look at anyone, it’s a sin.”
The German national Gerhard Menz died of malaria, according to the
Equatorial Guinean authorities. But the men speak of a different
course of events and cause of death.
“When they hit him, he never said a word,” said Augusto. But this
seemed to provoke the soldiers to beat him even more severely.
“After one beating, he started speaking in German, which he never did
before,” he continued.
Menz was looking in bad shape and repeated calls for medical
attention were ignored.
“They stripped him naked, picked him up and threw three buckets of
water over him. Then they put his body in front of us. His chest was
yellow and swollen and he was still muttering in German,” said
Augusto.
The old man Menz, an avid cigar connoisseur but noncigarette smoker,
asked his fellow inmates for a cigarette on that fateful day.
“We watched him die. We were waiting for our time also,” said
Augusto.
But, then, just as brutally and abruptly as their nightmare had
started, it stopped. The men believe that the death of Menz scared
the authorities.
Shortly after the arrests, Angolan authorities arrived to question
the Angolan-South Africans. Hot on their heels were Zimbabwean
investigators who spent a month questioning the men in minute detail.
Then it was the turn of the South African Scorpions.
After this, as the investi-gation shifted towards the financiers of
the coup, who had not been arrested, the prisoners, still in
leg-irons and handcuffs, were left to start accli-matising to life in
prison.
But Black Beach Prison is like no other. Or perhaps it is not so
different. If you have money, you can have comforts.
By contrast with the brutal-ity and harsh conditions, there was a
flourishing shebeen, and women are brought in to sleep with men for a
fee, and prisoners go walking around at night.
One of the warders was even taking Nigerian prisoners out of the
cells at night to steal cement at a construction site for him.
“I was in the shebeen and drinking a beer when one of the soldiers
(who had been beating them) apologised to me. He said he was just
following orders,” said Schmidt.
“The men who beat us, they are our friends now,” agrees Augusto.
After about two weeks in jail, Schmidt was made the cook in prison
and his leg-irons were removed.
“They’d take me into town with my long beard to do the shopping.
Meat, vegetables and stuff,” said Schmidt.
Schmidt was taken to the largest supermarket in town to shop for
groceries for the men.
All the men agree that they have found great solace in God while in
prison and used to avidly read the Bible and pray together.
As the trial dragged on the men drew some hope from
the government’s statements that it wanted to hold a trial that could
pass international scrutiny.
But throughout the trial, all evidence of torture was suppressed and
translations were often inaccurate and sometimes said exactly the
opposite of what witnesses said.
On judgement day the men stood mystified in the make-shift court room
in the Atepa Convention Centre for the last time as their fates were
read out in Spanish.
Only later in the cells were the men able to piece together what had
happened.
“Thank you God,” said Ribeiro.
“Happiness. I didn’t expect it,” said Augusto.
“I was just relieved,” said Schmidt.
But their personal joy was marred by the pain of leaving their
comrades behind. The Armenian aircrew were particularly shocked to
find five of them sentenced to 14 years each, with the pilot getting
21 years.
As talk turns to the men who are still sitting in Black Beach Prison,
Ribeiro, who had been silent throughout, closed his eyes and started
sobbing un-controllably, tears running over the lines of his
weathered face.
“When I left them I was crying. We were all crying,” stammered
Ribeiro.
“We told them to be strong, keep on praying and we’ll see you soon,”
said Augusto.
As free men, they hope to piece together the life they
once had.
Ribeiro plans to return to Mpumalanga with his common-law-wife and
hopes he can get his old job as a park ranger back.
Schmidt plans to look for a real job.
“You think a lot in prison. I don’t have qualifications, unless my
background in the army gets you a job,” he says.
But first things first.
“I’m going to make love. And then I want to get married
as soon as possible.” – Independent Foreign Service