12 June 2012 :

a 20-year-old man, Amadou Tamboura, was sentenced to death in Equatorial Guinea, after the Litoral Provincial Court in the city of Bata convicted him of aggravated murder. The death penalty is mandatory for murder unless there are mitigating circumstances. Amadou Tamboura is a Malian national who at the time of the crime had been living with relatives in the city of Bata for two months. During his trial in April 2012 Amadou Tamboura admitted to stabbing a woman on the night of 21 December 2011, at his house. He admitted to having sex with the woman who, according to him, was his lover. He said that the woman then asked him for money; as he did not have the amount she asked for she took a knife from the kitchen and attacked him. They fought, and in trying to take the knife away from the woman, he stabbed her. The prosecution accepted that Amadou Tamboura had killed the woman accidentally in the course of the fight and that he had tried to compensate her family by offering them money. The prosecutor asked for a sentence of 23 years’ imprisonment, but the court sentenced him to death. Amadou Tamboura‘s lawyer has lodged an appeal with the Supreme Court on the grounds that the killing was not premeditated and that the prosecution had asked for a custodial sentence and not the death penalty. No date has yet been set for the appeal hearing.