Mba's House: Bush Administration renting embassy property from known torturer

By Ken Silverstein

Last August, Donald C. Johnson, the Bush Administration's ambassador-designate to Equatorial Guinea, was asked as part of his confirmation hearing if the building that houses the U.S. embassy in that country was owned by Minister of National Security Manuel Nguema Mba. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee also wanted to know if Mba, the embassy's landlord, has “been accused by the U.S. or the United Nations Commission on Human Rights of participating in the torture of political opponents to the Obiang regime.”

Johnson confirmed that Mba, the uncle of ruling dictator Teodoro Obiang, is the owner of the building that currently houses the embassy, but said that at “the time the lease was entered into, [he] was not Minister of National Security.” Furthermore, Johnson said, the United States was “not aware of any human rights accusations” against Mba at the time the lease agreement was signed.

John Bennett, a former U.S. ambassador to Equatorial Guinea, did not find Johnson's testimony convincing. “To say that he was not the ‘minister’,” said Bennett, “is being too cute.” It may have been technically accurate to say that Mba was not the minister at the time the lease was signed, Bennett explained, but Mba has been the de facto minister, with the official title of “Minister Delegate,” for at least fifteen years. Bennett also pointed out that Mba's record as a human-rights violator is only a Google search away. Indeed, in a fine article last year, Mother Jones said that the U.S. was renting land from Mba and noted his past as a torturer. The most damning search result is a 1994 United Nations report that details how Mba oversaw the torture and murder of Pedro Motú, a political opponent of the regime who had recently returned from exile.

According to the report, which in turn summarizes a report from a Special Rapporteur, on August 22, 1993, Mba and another security official entered a hotel and broke down a door in order to beat Pedro Motú. They then dragged him down the stairs, put him into a police van, and took him to Malabo prison where, according to the testimony of other people detained in the prison, Motú arrived unconscious. He died without regaining consciousness on the morning of the 23rd.

Bennett, who was ambassador at the time of Motú's death, suggested that U.S. officials interested in Mba's background could have read the report he filed at the time; he said that he based his account on the statement of a witness who “described in very graphic detail how Motú over a period of several hours had been beaten, went comatose, was revived with buckets of water, and further tortured until he did not respond and those beating him left. The torture, as described, included full kicks to all parts of the body and beating with staves or cudgels.” Mba, said Bennett, has subsequently “been involved in continuing mayhem, including indications that he has continued to carry out his government's campaign in the physical elimination . . . of Guinean exiles as well as the continued torture, which in some cases led to death, of domestic opposition members.”

Equatorial Guinea's official report stated that Pedro Motú had committed suicide on August 23 when he realized the “enormity of his crimes.”

A few months ago, the State Department asked Bennett to provide a portrait-style photograph of himself to be displayed at the U.S. embassy in Equatorial Guinea along with portraits of other previous ambassadors. “At first I thought, ‘fine,’” he told me, “but then I thought, ‘Why in the hell would I want to have myself hang in the house of Manuel Nguema Mba?’” So Bennett declined to provide a photograph and instead suggested that the United States terminate its lease with Mba as quickly as possible and have the State Department Inspector General investigate how such a deal was made in the first place.

The United States is paying Mba, a man who has overseen the torture and murder of political dissidents, a monthly rent of $17,500.

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