Aggravated murder, spying and armed robbery are capital crimes.

Aggravated murder, spying and armed robbery are capital crimes.
President Teodoro Obiang Nguema has ruled the country since seizing power in a military coup d'etat in 1979, when he deposed his uncle and first post independence president (from Spain in 1968) Francisco Nguema.
Obiang Nguema had his uncle tried and executed. He proclaimed an amnesty for refugees (Nguema had caused a third of the population to flee through widespread human rights abuses) and released some 5,000 political prisoners. However, he kept the absolute control he had inherited.
President Obiang Nguema won Equatorial Guinea's first-ever multiparty presidential election in 1996 with 99% of the vote, amid reports of widespread fraud and irregularities. He was re-elected with 97.1 percent of the vote and 98 percent of registered voters participating in a December 2002 election again marred by extensive fraud and intimidation.
The president controls most opposition parties through patronage and the police and security forces through the Minister of the Interior. The judiciary is not independent.
In 2004, 14 defendants were found guilty of a role in an alleged plot to overthrow President Obiang Nguema. Opposition leader Severo Moto, who is in exile in Spain, was given 63 years in absentia. He was purportedly to be installed in power following the coup. The other defendants, mainly foreigners, were found guilty of a role in the coup plot, and their leader, South African Nick du Toit was jailed for 34 years. Both men escaped the death penalty requested by the prosecution. South Africa, before the sentencing, had said it would intervene if the death penalty were to be meted out to Du Toit.
Equatorial Guinea has also requested the extradition of other alleged plotters – including Mark Thatcher, son of former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher - from South Africa, saying it would not use the death penalty.
President Obiang Nguema said foreign powers were involved in a plot to overthrow him. In an interview in August 2004, he said the country's judges would decide the fate of the plotters, but if he were the judge, "I would apply the maximum penalty - execution by firing squad." The last known executions took place in 1997.