The last remaining South African ”human shields” in Iraq will return home next Tuesday after they decided to leave the war-torn country, the Iraq Action Committee said on Friday.
Four ”human shields” arrived home on Tuesday.
Action committee representative Moosa Aziz said at least 20 human shields still in Baghdad left the city early on Friday morning.
”The human shields including their co-ordinator, Abie Dawjee, took a bus from Baghdad to Amman in Jordan via all the back roads. They will stay in Amman and fly to Egypt and return to Johannesburg on Tuesday,” Aziz said.
The four ”human shields” who left Baghdad earlier this week to offer assistance at a refugee camp on the Jordan-Iraq border would join the rest of the group on Friday night, Aziz said.
Dawjee and the rest of the group, among them lawyers and students, volunteered to be human shields at selected sites in Iraq.
They were placed voluntarily at a water purification site, an oil refinery and an electricity site in Baghdad.
Another group of ”human shields” returned home to South Africa on Tuesday.
One of them said he went to the Gulf nation to act as a human shield, and not as a target for bombs.
”Being a human shield when they’re throwing bombs won’t help anybody,” Mohammed Suleiman said shortly after arriving at the Johannesburg International Airport.
Suleiman (45) Mduduzi Manana (19) the son of Mpumalanga health MEC Sibongile Manana, and M Bayat were among the first group to return. ‒ Sapa