South Africans ‘helped Gaddafi’

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Nineteen South Africans were contracted to help former Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi escape to Niger and two of them died in the process, the Rapport newspaper reported on Sunday. However, the department of international relations and co-operation has distanced itself from the newspaper report saying there was no way of verifying it “independently”. “As far as we are concerned, they remain rumours for now. They (the mercenaries) wouldn't have gone through official channels so we've got no way of independently verifying these allegations,” said spokesman Clayson Monyela. In an interview with Rapport, one of the men, Danie Odendaal, who was being treated in a North African hospital, told the newspaper that the South Africans had been hired by a number of private security companies. He described their efforts to evacuate Gaddafi from his home town of Sirte, in Libya, as a “massive failure”.

Gaddafi was killed on Thursday.

Odendaal and four other South Africans were apparently in a Jeep which raced out of Sirte in the Gaddafi convoy.

He told the newspaper: “We all believed they wanted to get him out (of Libya)”, but the Nato-forces opened fire on the convoy from the air.

Libyan soldiers then descended on the convoy. Gaddafi and a couple of his minders fled into a storm water drain, where he was later found. The mercenaries scattered.

Odendaal told Rapport that the Libyans were mindful not to shoot the foreigners and helped him to flee.

President Jacob Zuma has said on Friday that Gaddafi should not have been killed, but brought before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to answer to allegations of torturing and killing civilians and rebel forces.

There was a trend across the world that leaders were not being given the opportunity of a trial, Zuma said.

“Given there was a warrant of arrest against Gaddafi, those who found him should have arrested him and handed him to the ICC,” he said.

“We expected him to be captured, given that everybody knew there was a warrant of arrest issued against him.” - Sapa