By: Daniel McElroy

After a lengthy detention of almost six months, Equatoguinean political cartoonist and activist Ramón Esono Ebalé was released on March 7, 2018 after being cleared of the fabricated charges against him.

Ebalé, who lives in El Salvador, had returned to Equatorial Guinea on September 17, 2017 to renew his passport, and was aware when he entered the country that he could be targeted for his vocal opposition to President Teodoro Obiang. Ebalé’s blog featuring political commentary and a graphic novel published in 2014 were in opposition to a colonial-era law forbidding criticism of the president and other high-ranking officials. He was told at the time of his arrest that he would need to join a political party (or start one) if he wanted to be politically active.

A week after Ebalé’s arrest in September, a government-sponsored news channel reported that he had been arrested with 1 million counterfeit Central African francs (USD $1,890). However, Ebalé was not formally charged with counterfeiting until December 7, nearly two months after he had been detained. Equatoguinean law forbids detention without charge for longer than 72 hours.

Despite the severity of the allegations against him, the state prosecutor was forced to drop all charges at Ebalé’s trial on February 27. When the police officer who had officially brought the charges against Ebalé gave an account that conflicted with other testimony regarding his arrest, he was forced to admit that he had fabricated the original charge on orders from a superior. Ebalé was officially released from custody on March 7.