The alleged plotters of a coup in Equatorial Guinea...

The alleged plotters of a coup in Equatorial Guinea are "blood-thirsty pirates" who deserve the firing squad, the country's President Teodoro Obiang Nguema said in an interview. "I want to see them in my country, in my prisons," he said.
If the alleged plotters were handed over to Equatorial Guinea then the oil-rich country's judges would decide their fate, Obiang said. "But if I were to be the judge," he added, "I would apply the maximum penalty -- execution by firing squad."
Fourteen alleged mercenaries were already being held in the notorious Black Beach prison in the Guinean capital Malabo and their trial on conspiracy charges is ongoing. A 15th suspect, a German, died while in custody. Officials in the former Spanish colony say he died from cerebral malaria, but rights groups said he was tortured to death. Briton Simon Mann, an alleged mastermind of the coup plot was found guilty a few days previously in a court in Zimbabwe of attempting to illegally buy arms to try to overthrow Obiang. The court absolved 66 other suspected mercenaries, arrested along with Mann in March when their plane stopped in Harare to pick up weapons -- which they say were intended to guard a diamond mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo.