On a recent Wednesday, in a second-floor room of the John F. Germany Library in downtown Tampa, nine men and women gathered, plotting how they plan to spring an African prisoner from an Equatorial Guinea penitentiary.
They are an unlikely group of jail-breakers: a 70-year-old ordained minister; two soft-spoken University of South Florida students; a Coptic Orthodox Charities worker; a federal attorney; CL's theater critic; an engineering graduate student at USF; an unusually upbeat death penalty abolitionist; and the assistant director of the American Civil Liberties Union West Central Florida office.
For the last eight months, this age- and race-diverse crew has met to advocate for the freedom of Bienvenido Samba Momesori, an outspoken pastor. No member of the group has ever met this man and, most likely, never will. In fact, the only information they have on Rev. Samba came from a manila envelope they received in September from the human rights organization Amnesty International. An envelope that told the story of a peaceful man illegally detained for nearly four years by a corrupt government fearful of dissent from the country's ethnic minorities.
"By all indications, he seems to be a really gentle person," says Mark Leib (the theater critic), who drew attention to the imprisoned man's plight last year.
So while Rev. Samba, a father and husband in his mid-50s, sits alone in a two-meter-wide cell inside a prison known for its poor food and sadistic guards, these nine activists work tirelessly for the man's release.
Their master plan?
Write letters. Lots of letters.
"It's easy," says Dolly Warden, the group's grey-haired coordinator. "It's something I feel I can do."
But will it work?
The current members of Amnesty International Group 240 don't really know when their chapter formed — none of the original founders are left — but the consensus is six years ago. The founders have long left town, and other than Warden, who joined in 2003, most have only been active a year or two, drawn in by the national organization's publicized campaigns.
The local chapter has been involved in a variety of issues from abolishing the death penalty to gay rights and anti-human-trafficking campaigns. But it wasn't until last year that Leib, who was involved in a Boston chapter in the early '80s, joined the Tampa group and suggested they advocate for a "prisoner of conscience," a kind-of adopt-a-political-prisoner campaign. Leib contacted Amnesty's London office and, a few months later, received a large manila envelope containing reports on their prisoner: Bienvenido Samba Momesori.
As the pastor of the Church of Cherubs and Seraphs, Rev. Samba spoke out against the Equatorial Guinea government's treatment of ethnic minorities like the Bubis. (Rev. Samba is a Bubi.) After rebel Bubis attacked military sites in the late '90s, police rounded up hundreds of innocent Bubis, torturing and imprisoning them.
Rev. Samba was first arrested in 1998 and sentenced to death for his criticism of the government. He was released in 2002 only to be arrested again a year later.
According to Amnesty International and reports from African news agencies, Rev. Samba was hidden from Red Cross workers and his family for months. Eventually, his family got word that he was being held in the Evinayong Public Prison, hundreds of miles from his home in the capital of Malabo. There he lacks sufficient food and medical care. And he's never been formally charged.
(The Equatorial Guinea embassy in Washington, D.C., did not return calls for comment.)
Samba is just one of the thousands of prisoners of conscience — those jailed solely for the peaceful expression of their beliefs or because of their religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation —identified by Amnesty International in 57 different countries. After investigating the circumstances around a prisoner's arrest, Amnesty International embarks on a campaign to pressure governments to release those jailed unfairly, primarily through letter-writing campaigns.
"It's one powerful tool in influencing the behavior of the authorities toward that individual," says Amnesty International's Michael O'Reilly, who oversees all the prisoner of conscience letter-writing campaigns nationally. By letting corrupt government officials know people across the world are keeping tabs on their prisoners, O'Reilly says many detainees are "beaten less or not at all" and are usually afforded better treatment. The ultimate goal, he says, is the release of the prisoner. And, believe it or not, governments do release their captives: more than 40,000 since Amnesty began in 1961.
"It's difficult to say to what extent the actions of Amnesty was responsible for those releases," O'Reilly says. "But we've received information from the prisoners themselves that these campaigns work."
Though there is no way to quantify how many letters it takes to release a prisoner, O'Reilly says one of the main factors is the United States government's relationship with the offending country. It may be hard, for instance, for U.S. activists to put pressure on Iran and the Ayatollah. But if the U.S. has some sort of economic or political tie with a country — Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently met with Equatorial Guinea President-General Teodoro Obiang, for example, calling him a "good friend" — there's more of a chance officials will listen.
Along with other Amnesty chapters in Spain and Sweden, the Tampa group writes approximately 10 letters a month to various Equatorial Guinea officials — the president, attorney general, even the minister of agriculture — imploring them to release Rev. Samba.
Warden slides her last letter toward me.
"This is my eighth letter to you," begins the letter, addressed to the prime minister. Warden says the group steps up its efforts on Christmas and the president's birthday in the spring in an attempt to appeal to his emotional side.
"You try to be polite," Leib says, estimating he's written about 25 letters so far. "You don't want to piss them off, because they have this guy's life in their hands."
But why would an average Tampa resident spend hours each week writing government officials of a country halfway across the world to plea passionately for the release of a man they have never met and most likely never will? When I ask the small group, they fall silent for several seconds. Warden speaks first.
"That isn't a question," she says. "Why wouldn't you do it? I have the ability and I have the opportunity, so I do it."
For these activists, Rev. Samba, a man whose face has only been seen by them in one grainy photo, is more than an activist's pet project, forgotten after a monthly meeting. He is a measurable part of their life, always in their thoughts.
"I think about him all the time," Leib says. "I'll read the paper and hear about someone who has been released from death row because of DNA evidence, and I think of Rev. Samba, sitting there in jail."
To write Equatorial Guinea's president for the release of Rev. Samba, address letters to: General Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo/ Presidente de la Republica/ Gabinete del Presidente de la Republica/ Malabo/ Republic of Equatorial Guinea. For more information on Rev. Samba, visit amnesty.org.
This article appears in Jun 27 – Jul 3, 2007.