Nine Zimbabwean nationals are being held in detention in South Africa after being arrested on Sunday, November 8, in Johannesburg, suspected of intending to join the war in Ukraine, the South African prosecutor’s office said.<\/p>\n
Five men were arrested at OR Tambo International Airport and four others in a hotel in the Bruma district. They appeared on Monday before the courts of Kempton Park and Johannesburg and are being prosecuted for violating the 1998 South African law regulating military assistance abroad.<\/p>\n
According to the police, the operation was conducted following an investigation involving the Hawks, the South African unit responsible for priority crimes, Interpol, police intelligence services, and international partners. The authorities did not identify a recruiter nor specify the details of the planned trip.<\/p>\n
The five men prosecuted in Kempton Park are due to appear before the court on Tuesday, November 10, while the case concerning the other four has been postponed to Thursday, November 12. The prosecution stated that these deadlines are intended to allow them to obtain legal assistance and reiterated that they benefit from the presumption of innocence.<\/p>\n
South African legislation prohibits mercenary activities and requires authorization for recruitment, training, or military assistance intended for a foreign conflict. Its provisions also apply to foreign nationals acting from South African territory.<\/p>\n
These arrests come as several African governments seek to repatriate nationals who went to fight in Ukraine. Pretoria has already organized the return of South African citizens who claimed to have been lured by false promises of training or employment.<\/p>\n
The Zimbabwean government stated in March that 15 of its nationals had been killed in the conflict and that it was seeking the return of 66 others. Kenya indicated in February that more than 1,000 of its citizens had been recruited, while Ghana and Kenya announced in October that they had obtained a commitment from Moscow to end the enlistment of their nationals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arrested at OR Tambo airport and in a hotel in Johannesburg, the nine men are being held in custody in two separate proceedings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":31,"featured_media":533137,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_trash_the_other_posts":false,"_benews_format":"","_benews_media_url":"","_benews_urgent_until":0,"_benews_essentials":"","_benews_format_auto":"","_benews_nl_alert":false,"_benews_premium":false,"editor_notices":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"pays":[148],"personnalite":[],"class_list":["post-533136","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-security","pays-south-africa"],"acf":{"type_de_publication":"actualite","nom_de_linstitution":"","description_de_linstitution":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533136","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/31"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533136"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533136\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":533138,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533136\/revisions\/533138"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533137"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533136"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533136"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533136"},{"taxonomy":"pays","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pays?post=533136"},{"taxonomy":"personnalite","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/benews.ci\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/personnalite?post=533136"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}