Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, June 5, 2018 (AFP)
Equatorial Guinea's ruling party on Tuesday denied an allegation that the state "assassinated" a former army captain because he was a cousin of the country's opposition leader.
Gabriel Nse Obiang, head of the now-dissolved opposition party Citizens for Innovation (CI), had told AFP on Friday he had "all the proof" that Evaristo Oyaga Sima was killed in prison in the capital Malabo.
"His neck was broken, there were blows to his head, blood was flowing. He was killed because he was my cousin," Obiang said, describing the death as a "state assassination."
Oyaga Sima's family said he died overnight on May 27 in suspicious circumstances.
On Tuesday, however, the ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea ( PDGE ) dismissed the "supposed killing of an imaginary former armed forces captain, Evaristo Oyaga Sima," as a "hoax with no kind of veracity".
Obiang has "made up stories for years against the legitimate government of Equatorial Guinea and its dignitaries (and) does not deserve the credibility accorded to him by some Western media," the PDGE said in a statement.
Oyaga Sima was jailed at Malabo's central Black Beach prison in 2016 after being sentenced to four years in jail for desertion, Obiang said.
His family said he had been arrested in neighbouring Gabon and extradited to Malabo.
The CI was dissolved in February, with 21 of its members including the party's only MP sentenced to 30 years in prison for "sedition, public disorder, attacks on authority and serious bodily harm."
The trial was linked to scuffles that occurred a week before legislative elections last November, when police tried to stop a CI rally in Aconibe, Obiang's hometown.
A former Spanish colony of 1.2 million people, awash with oil but mired in poverty and a reputation for corruption, Equatorial Guinea has been ruled with an iron fist by Teodoro Obiang Nguema since 1979.
In March, the CI said the authorities carried out a wave of arrests and torture after an attempted coup last December.
An opposition activist, Santiago Ebee Ela, 41, was killed while in detention in mid-January, it said.

Sumber : AFP