Video: Coup Trial Travesty of Justice in Equatorial Guinea

An Equatorial Guinea court’s conviction of 112 defendants on May 31, 2019, in a trial rife with due process violations, including confessions extracted through torture, represents a gross miscarriage of justice, Human Rights Watch said today in releasing a video about the trial.

The American Bar Association’s Center for Human Rights, as part of the Clooney Foundation for Justice’s TrialWatch Project, sent five monitors to observe the trial. Juan Mendez, the former United Nations special rapporteur on torture and member of the TrialWatch Advisory Board, prepared a public preliminary report based on their notes, which describes a litany of abuse including coerced confessions and due process violations before and during the trial. The video includes interviews with Mendez and two lawyers who observed parts of the trial.