The Foreign Ministry on Tuesday said it is investigating reports that South African mercenaries are training pro-junta recruits in Guinea.
”There have been both true and false leads about this story so we are very carefully checking on the veracity of it,” Department of Foreign Affairs Director General Ayanda Ntsaluba told a media briefing.
Witnesses in Guinea told Agence France-Presse on Monday that South African and Israeli army instructors, hired by the ruling junta, are training recruits in a camp in Forecariah, 100km south of the capital, Conakry.
Speaking two weeks after four South African mercenaries were pardoned in Equatorial Guinea for a failed coup bid, Ntsaluba said ”nefarious activities” could harm the country’s international ties.
”We do not want to see our citizens involved in nefarious activities abroad. These could undermine our foreign policy,” he said.
The new soldiers recruited by the junta, which seized power in Guinea on December 23 last year, are being trained in a camp formerly used to house Sierra Leone refugees outside Forecariah.
About 40 military instructors are training soldiers ”recruited on the basis of their ethnicity” as they belong to the same group as junta leader Captain Moussa Dadis Camara, witnesses said.
Observers accuse the junta, under increasing international pressure after the massacre of more than 150 opposition supporters at a rally in September, of recruiting young men from Camara’s home region close to Liberia and Sierra Leone. — AFP
