Two South African engineers, Frik Potgieter and Peter Huxham, have returned home on June 21 after spending over two years imprisoned in Equatorial Guinea on what the United Nations described as “arbitrary and illegal” drug charges.
The men were arrested in February 2023 after drugs were allegedly found in their luggage, just before they were set to return home from a five-week work assignment with Dutch oil firm SBM. Though initially sentenced to 12 years in prison and fined \$5 million, they were granted a presidential pardon following persistent appeals from their families and the South African government.
Their arrest occurred just days after luxury assets belonging to Equatorial Guinea’s Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang—son of the country’s president—were seized in South Africa as part of a court ruling. The timing led the engineers’ families and the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention to suggest that the arrests may have been retaliatory. Assets seized included a luxury yacht and two villas in Cape Town, but South African officials maintained that the court system, not the government, had jurisdiction over those proceedings.
South Africa’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola publicly thanked the Government of Equatorial Guinea for the pardon that facilitated the men’s release. Their families expressed immense relief, calling the two-year ordeal a period of profound suffering. The BBC has sought a response from Equatorial Guinea, which has not commented publicly. Meanwhile, the broader diplomatic implications remain delicate, as the fate of the seized assets still lies with the South African courts.