Emil Danielyan 10/07/04
Difficult economic times have forced many Armenians to search for work abroad. For most, especially the large number of Armenians in Russia, a foreign job means leading a relatively Spartan lifestyle—the main aim being saving enough to send money back to loved ones at home. For the six-man crew of a charter cargo jet, however, what appeared at first to be a routine assignment has turned into an ordeal in which they stand accused of participating in a failed coup attempt in the African nation of Equatorial Guinea.
Ashot Karapetian and his five-man crew departed in their heavy Antonov-12 transport jet from Yerevan’s international airport in January. They, along with dozens of other Armenian aviators, had taken on many jobs in the past shuttling cargo across Africa, and had no reason to believe that their current assignment would be any different than others.
They were mistaken.
The six Armenians found themselves under arrest last March, accused of participating in an international plot to overthrow Equatorial Guinea’s longtime president, Teodoro Obiang Nguema. Their trial in Equatorial-Guinea’s capital, Malabo, began August 23. The trial had been slated to resume October 4, but was postponed with no new resumption date set. If convicted, the six Armenians face long prison terms.
The aviators vigorously deny involvement in coup preparations. They enjoy the strong support of the Armenian government, which insists that they are innocent and which has lobbied hard to secure their release. President Robert Kocharian has personally appealed to Obiang to release the Armenian detainees.
Obiang, whose regime is seen by the United States as one of the most repressive in the world, has been in power ever since overthrowing his uncle and predecessor Macias Nguema in a 1979 coup. The impoverished former Spanish colony began to attract Western interest in the mid-1990s with the discovery of substantial hydrocarbon reserves off its Atlantic coast.
According to British news accounts, a group of South African and London-based businessmen, including the son of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, sought to grab their share of the oil riches by plotting to topple Obiang and install an exiled opposition leader in his place.
The reported conspiracy was uncovered in early March. The arrests of the Armenians and other foreigners in Malabo were announced a few days later. The accused ringleader is Nick du Toit, an apartheid-era soldier who ran a mercenary firm in South Africa until it was banned in 1999.
Prosecutors in Malabo have not provided details on the Armenian aircrew’s supposed role in the coup. Their Soviet-made Antonov-12 aircraft belonging to the Yerevan-based firm Tiga Air was chartered to carry out flights across the region by Central Asian Logistics (CAL), a German airfreight company.
CAL’s representative to Equatorial Guinea, Gerhard Eugen Merz, was also among the foreign detainees. Merz died, officially of cerebral malaria, in Malabo’s notorious Black Beach prison just days after his arrest. The human rights group Amnesty International said he was tortured to death.
The director of Tiga Air, Boris Avagian, insists that his company’s contract with the Germans only envisaged the transportation of “civilian goods and equipment.” He also claims to have never known or dealt with the reputed South African mercenary du Toit.
“The charges against our pilots are groundless,” Avagian said in a recent interview. “They are honest professionals who went to Equatorial Guinea to do their job.”
CAL chief executive, Thomas Rinnerd, speaking in a telephone interview, denied any connection between his Frankfurt-based company and the alleged coup conspirators. “The Armenian pilots are 200 percent innocent. So are Mr. Merz and our company,” he said. He added that the Armenian cargo jet had been hired by CAL to ship various supplies to oil companies operating in the African country
Officials in Malabo announced in early September that a team of investigators would travel to Armenia to probe possible links between the Armenian transport firm and the alleged coup plotters. Armenian authorities have maintained that they have no information about such a mission. But, a person close to the arrested aviators’ families claims that a visit did take place, and that the Guineans told the relatives not to talk to journalists.
The pilots, for their part, have testified at the trial that they carried out only one flight from Equatorial Guinea, bound for the Democratic Republic of Congo. They said the Congolese airport they were bound for was closed and they returned to Malabo with nothing in the hold.
Du Toit’s court testimony did not explicitly implicate the Armenians in the coup preparations, a fact that the Armenian government says proves their innocence. “These are quite serious ground for optimism,” Sergei Manaserian, Armenia’s ambassador to Egypt who has repeatedly visited Malabo since March, told the official Armenpress news agency on September 7.
The saga of the Antonov-12 crew is somewhat symbolic of the overall state of Armenia’s civil aviation sector. During the Soviet era, the small South Caucasus republic operated 13 airports and a possessed a fleet of commercial aircraft that employed more than a thousand pilots and technicians. Today, 0nly Yerevan’s Zvartnots international airport now functions at full capacity.
The post-Soviet economic decline coupled with government corruption and mismanagement is taking a heavy toll on the sector. Last year’s scandalous bankruptcy of Armenian Airlines, the state-run carrier flagship, left more than 300 pilots and flight engineers out of work. The luckiest few of them found new jobs with local small companies like Tiga Air that carry out charter flights in Asia and Africa.
The Armenian aircrews are cheap labor for the foreign firms that pay them a fraction of what they would spend on Western pilots. Aviation experts say they also run additional health and safety risks in third world countries. Two Armenian planes have already crashed in Iran and Sudan under mysterious circumstances.
Editor’s Note: Emil Danielyan is a Yerevan-based journalist and political analyst.
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