Mercenary plot

last updated 8 January 2015

Malabo, Equatorial Guinea

Sixty-four mercenaries discovered in a plane in Zimbabwe were on their way to overthrow the government of Equatorial Guinea, one of the mercenaries said this week. Mercenary Nick du Toit, a South African, said the plan was to force President Teodoro Obiang into exile and let the opposition leader take over. Obiang, who came to power in the 1980s by shooting the previous dictator, is ill, and tensions have arisen in his family over succession. The president’s brother, a friend of du Toit’s, opposes a plan to hand power to Obiang’s son, an international playboy and aspiring rap star. The tiny nation is Africa’s third-largest oil producer, after Nigeria and Angola, but the oil wealth enriches only a handful of people close to the president.