Families of jailed engineers protest at conference

The families of Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham last week protested against the detention of dual SA-UK citizens who were arrested in Equatorial Guinea in February 2023. The Daily Maverick reports that the engineers who were working for Dutch oil and gas company SBM Offshore were sentenced to 12 years in prison on drug trafficking charges, which the families say were fabricated. Their families protested outside Africa Energy Week at the Cape Town International Convention Centre to appeal to representatives of Equatorial Guinea, Department of International Relations & Co-operation Minister Ronald Lamola, and David Lammy, the UK Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs, for the return of the prisoners. ‘Hopefully, we can get through to everybody to get on board and help free our guys, because they’ve been there for 634 days unlawfully. The United Nations already proved that it’s unlawful, there’s no evidence. They were just at the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said Potgieter’s wife, Sonja. Shaun Murphy, Potgieter’s brother-in-law, said ‘our aim is to get the officials of Equatorial Guinea to grant clemency’. The families believe that the duo is caught up in diplomatic and political crossfire between SA and Equatorial Guinea. They were arrested two days after the SA courts seized a luxury superyacht belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s Vice-President, Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue. Earlier, the SA courts had also seized Obiang’s two luxury Cape Town villas.

Full Daily Maverick report

Meanwhile, Gerco van Deventer who was kidnapped in Libya six years ago, is back in SA and coming to terms with his ordeal. News24 reports that Gerco was working as a paramedic at a power plant construction site in Libya in 2017 when he was kidnapped by an Al-Qaeda splinter group on his way to work. The following year he was ‘sold’ to militant Islamists linked to Al-Qaeda in Mali where he was held until his release late last year. Gerco wants to use his experience to offer courses to empower other people who work abroad with the knowledge and skills they'll need in case they find themselves in a similar situation. ‘I want to help people survive. I want to equip them to handle it mentally,’ he said.

Full News24 report