Nick du Toit is a former
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n arms dealer, former
mercenaryA mercenary, is a person who takes part in an armed conflict based on the promise of material compensation rather than having a direct interest in, or a legal obligation to, the conflict itself. A non-conscript professional member of a regular army is not considered to be a mercenary although he...
and former army officer of
32 Battalion32 Battalion was a special light infantry battalion of the South African Army, composed of black and white commissioned and enlisted personnel...
and the 5th Reconnaissance Commando. He was implicated in the plot to overthrow
Teodoro ObiangTeodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo is an Equatoguinean politician who has been President of Equatorial Guinea since 1979. He ousted his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, in an August 1979 military coup and has overseen Equatorial Guinea's emergence as an important oil producer, beginning in the 1990s...
of
Equatorial GuineaEquatorial Guinea, officially the Republic of Equatorial Guinea where the capital Malabo is situated.Annobón is the southernmost island of Equatorial Guinea and is situated just south of the equator. Bioko island is the northernmost point of Equatorial Guinea. Between the two islands and to the...
.
He went on trial in
MalaboMalabo is the capital of Equatorial Guinea, located on the northern coast of Bioko Island on the rim of a sunken volcano....
along with 18 other men accused of being the advance party for 70 other mercenaries. The prosecution asked for the death penalty but when all were found guilty, jail sentences were handed out with du Toit receiving 34 years (to be served in Malabo's notorious
Black BeachBlack Beach , located on the island of Bioko, in the capital city of Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, is of one of Africa's most notorious prisons.-Feared reputation:...
prison).
His job in the
coup d'étatA coup d'état state, literally: strike/blow of state)—also known as a coup, putsch, and overthrow—is the sudden, extrajudicial deposition of a government, usually by a small group of the existing state establishment—typically the military—to replace the deposed government with another body; either...
was reportedly to supply the mercenaries with arms including AK47s,
RPGsA rocket-propelled grenade is a shoulder-fired, anti-tank weapon system which fires rockets equipped with an explosive warhead. These warheads are affixed to a rocket motor and stabilized in flight with fins. Some types of RPG are reloadable while others are single-use. RPGs, with the exception of...
,
PK machine gunThe PK is a 7.62 mm general-purpose machine gun designed in the Soviet Union and currently in production in Russia. The PK machine gun was introduced in the 1960s and replaced the SGM and RPD machine guns in Soviet service...
s, and
mortarsA mortar is an indirect fire weapon that fires explosive projectiles known as bombs at low velocities, short ranges, and high-arcing ballistic trajectories. It is typically muzzle-loading and has a barrel length less than 15 times its caliber....
, and to secure the control tower at the Malabo airport and change the frequency to establish communication with the incoming plane from
ZimbabweZimbabwe is a landlocked country located in the southern part of the African continent, between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the southwest, Zambia and a tip of Namibia to the northwest and Mozambique to the east. Zimbabwe has three...
carrying more mercenaries. After his capture, he appeared on
South AfricaThe Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
n television announcing the failure of the coup and the names of co-conspirators.
Du Toit's wife claimed that her husband had been tortured; namely stamping on du Toit's feet until his toenails came off, electric shocks and beatings.
He was given a presidential pardon by Equatorial Guinea's ruler, President Obiang, on 3 November 2009, and was released, along with Sergio Fernando Patricio Cardoso, Jose Passocas Domingos and Georges Olympic Nunez Alerson.
Simon MannSimon Francis Mann is a British mercenary and former British Army officer. He had been serving a 34-year prison sentence in Equatorial Guinea for his role in a failed coup d'état in 2004, before receiving a presidential pardon on humanitarian grounds on 2 November 2009.Mann was extradited from...
was also released and was back in England by 6 November 2009.
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