Black Beach was overthrown in a 1979 coup d'état. Black Beach holds a number of foreign prisoners sentenced for participating in a 2004 coup d'état attempt against the President of Equatorial Guinea, Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo. These included Simon Mann, the alleged ringleader, until his presidential pardon on 2 November 2009 on humanitarian grounds, and more recently Ramón Esono Ebalé (released in March 2018). Black Beach Black Beach (), located on the island of Bioko, in the capital city of Malabo in Equatorial Guinea, is one of Africa's most notorious prisons. It has a reputation for systematically neglecting and brutalising inmates. Medical
2004 Equatorial Guinea coup d'état attempt interest that there be a coup d'etat...'I therefore wanted to warn the Equatorial Guinea authorities. I also considered it my duty to warn the authorities in US and England because some of their nationals might be killed. I submitted a report in December 2003 of what I had discovered to Michael Westphal of the Pentagon (in Donald Rumsfeld's department). I expected the US government to take steps to warn Equatorial Guinea or to stop the coup. This was also my expectation as regard the British government, which I warned through two SIS people I knew, and to whom I sent