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Cape Town - Twelve South African pilots flying 12 light aircraft were arrested by Namibian police at Ondangwa Airport on Saturday and spent the night in jail, apparently because their flight documents were not in order.
They were released early on Sunday after a court, convened on Saturday night in Oshakati, found their arrest to be unlawful.
However, when they returned to the airport at Ondangwa, police refused to allow them to leave the country in their aircraft, which had been “quarantined” until their flight papers have been rectified.
The group, who left South Africa on April 27, were on a 16-day flying trip across Botswana and Namibia in 12 small two-seater aircraft, part holiday and partly to raise awareness and funds for the Cancer Association of South Africa, which endorsed their trip.
Larry McGillewie, a flight instructor at Grahamstown Flying Club and trip organiser, said from Ondangwa on Sunday: “It’s a complete mess. We still have no permission to fly and may not fly until there is some sort of communication between the police and the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA). “We’ve not been re-arrested, but we can’t fly out.”
McGillewie said that when they landed at Ondangwa airport at 3pm on Saturday they found “a huge entourage of police and armed military guards waiting for us.
“They demanded a document we had applied for, but we had been issued with only one document which we had been told was all we needed. But they (police) said we had come into the country illegally… They said (we were) all under arrest. They separated us from our partners and put us 12 pilots in a police van and drove us to the police station,” McGillewie said.
“We were all put into one cell, a very dirty, smelly cell with a drain in the middle. We were given no food or drink and it was infested with cockroaches. My wife contacted a lawyer in Oshakati and they got the judge up, and the court threw the case out and issued an order for our release. At about 5 or 6am – our watches had been taken – they released us.
“But when we got to the airport the police were there again and strip-searched the aircraft. Then, after waiting at the airport all day, we were told we could not leave.”
McGillewie said that when they approached the CAA in Namibia before the trip to arrange documentation they had been told that they must approach the Namibian Microlight Association to get documentation, which they did. There are 20 South Africans in the group, but only the pilots were arrested.
The lawyer representing the pilots, Farieda Kishi, said there had been a “procedural error” when the pilots had been issued with a certificate of competency but not a permit for landing.
The Cape Times phoned the police in Ondangwa for comment on Sunday, but was told to phone back on Monday.
Cape Times