Three Ukranians were forbidden to board a Johannesburg-Antananarivo flight on Friday after a search found army-style combat uniforms and a small electricity generator in their baggage, said Madagascar’s consul general in Johannesburg.
The consul general, Bruno Ranarivelo, said the three men, who were around 40 and who had travelled from Kiev via Amsterdam on tourist visas, ”were unable to say where they were going in Madagascar or where they would be staying, just that they would be met at the airport”.
Their passports were stamped as having been issued four years ago, but were in pristine condition, he added.
They were not arrested, he said.
The action followed a series of reports that mercenaries are planning to topple newly elected President Marc Ravalomanana.
His administration is combating supporters of former president Didier Ratsiraka, who has rejected the results of the election.
The consul general refrained from speculating on whether the Ukranians were mercenaries, but said the three would not be allowed on the next weekly Air Madagascar flight from Johannesburg to Antananarivo. He said he understood they were still at Johannesburg International Airport on Friday evening, awaiting flights that would take them back to Kiev.
Ravalomanana earlier on Friday accused his arch-foe of sending mercenaries from South Africa to assassinate him as African leaders gathered in Ethiopia to try to diffuse a deepening six-month-old power feud on the Indian Ocean island.
”Reliable sources informed us that three helicopters left this morning from East London, in South Africa, with 36 mercenaries on board destined for the island of Sainte-Marie (off Madagascar’s east coast),” Ravalomanana’s representative, Raymond Ramandimbilahatra, said in Antananarivo.
”They have orders … to assassinate President Marc
Ravalomanana,” he said, reading from a statement.
Ramandimbilahatra later told AFP that Ratsiraka was behind the plot.
Air traffic control in East London said it was not allowed to comment on movements into or out of the city and, although off-the-record comments seemed to indicate nothing unusual happening, referred reporters to its Johannesburg head office.
Meanwhile, Brian Katz of AV8 helicopter charter company said he had been at the airport for most of the day and there ”were certainly no helicopters either landing or taking off”.
Airport duty manager Ralton Schwarz said he lived near the airport and would have noticed large helicopters landing but heard nothing and none had arrived since he had come on duty late Friday morning.
Quintus Erasmus, who logs all the aircraft coming into or out of the airport’s hangars, also said he had seen no helicopters either on Thursday or Friday.
Dr Johan van Vollenhoven, managing director of Air Traffic and Navigation Services (ATNS), said his company, which controls all South Africa’s airspace, did not give out any information on any air traffic.
”If there is anything unusual there is a procedure which involves the military. No unusual movements from anywhere in South Africa have been reported to ATNS and that includes East London,” he said.
On Wednesday, Tanzanian authorities intercepted — after Paris sent an alert — 12 Madagascar-bound French mercenaries who had arrived in Dar es Salaam on a chartered plane, and sent them straight back to France.
They were not arrested there, as French police considered they had not committed any crime. Reliable sources in Madagascar told AFP on Friday that a coup d’etat by mercenaries was being prepared in South Africa, but did not provide details.
The consul general transmitted a note to South Africa’s foreign ministry recently expressing the new government’s concerns over such reports.
He said that South African authorities had provided ”superb cooperation”, notably at the airport, and had confirmed to him that the air traffic controllers had not detected any suspicious flights in South African airspace. – Sapa