OWN CORRESPONDENT, Maputo | Monday 1.00pm.
FOREIGN affairs official Robert McBride, arriving back in South Africa after being freed from detention in Mozambique on Monday, says he was falsely implicated on charges of gun running in Mozambique and that he knows who set him up.
Speaking at a media conference at Johannesburg airport, McBride said he is prepared to reveal the names of the conspirators “to the relevant people”.
Certain people, he said, had misled investigators in the gun-running probe and had tampered with witnesses. He said he joined a branch of the National Intelligence Agency in December last year, a week before his first trip to Mozambique, and had been investigating arms trafficking when he was arrested on his second trip in March.
McBride said there was definitely a Mozambican link to the ongoing cash-in-transit heists in South Africa. He said it was strange that the discredited Meiring report on plans to overthrow the South African government had been used as the basis of the case against him in Mozambique.
Asked if he was upset that the government did not do more to secure his release, McBride said: “It was important not to intervene on a political level because that would have cast doubt on the proceedings.” He said he is an ANC member and will remain an ANC member.
His unpleasant experience in Mozambique was worthwhile, McBride said, because of the information his investigation had uncovered. He said the Mozambican authorities were aware that he had committed no crime and that he had been framed because people on both sides of the border were uncomfortable with his investigations.
His lawyer, Jose Nascimento, said McBride was conditionally released on the order of a Supreme Court judge. The matter was not finalised and proceedings are still sub judice.