Six French soldiers have been arrested in Equatorial Guinea. The soldiers were on board an helicopter that landed on July 28, 2021 at an air port in Bata, the second largest city in Equatorial Guinea without permission.

Cameroon Intelligence Report gathered that the helicopter had been shuttling between Douala, the economic capital of Cameroon, and Libreville, the capital of Gabon, which houses French military bases.

Equatorial Guinea military officials say the incident is an operation of espionage and provocation coming from Paris.

For its part, the French army in a press statement released by Colonel Pascal Ianni, spokesman for the French military staff confirmed the arrest and said the soldiers landed Wednesday at 14:15 because they were running out of fuel.

Equatorial Guinea has dismissed the French version of the story as fake and the six soldiers were questioned on Thursday in a police station in Bata.

This incident comes at a time when Teodorin Obiang (52), son of President Obiang Nguema and vice-president of the country, was definitively condemned by French justice on Wednesday in the trial of ill-gotten gains.

In February 2020, he was sentenced by the Paris Court of Appeal to a three-year suspended prison sentence, a 30 million euro fine and the confiscation of all his assets seized for “laundering of misuse of social assets, misappropriation of public funds and breach of trust” between 1997 and 2011.

By Rita Akana