Cape Town - A Cape Town couple were unable to visit Palestinian holy sites after they were allegedly detained in Tel Aviv on Tuesday.
Raoul Ridwaan Swarts and his German wife, Susanna Valentina Hesse, left Cape Town and flew to Israel via Addis Ababa on Ethiopian Airlines on Monday.
Swarts’s brother Dehran said the couple spent the night in Addis Ababa and arrived in Tel Aviv on Tuesday night.
“I was informed by my brother during the early hours of Wednesday morning that he and his German wife were questioned and deported after arriving in Tel Aviv en route to visiting holy sites in Palestine,” he said.
Dehran said they must have been detained for six hours, until he received a message from them after 4am on Wednesday morning that they were being deported.
The Israeli embassy in South Africa could not be reached for comment on Wednesday.
“I have been in touch with the SA embassy as well as the German one in Pretoria. I do not know of the reasons for the apparent deportation and I am trying to find out if they were indeed deported,” he said.
Swarts said that after he contacted both embassies, he was told that the Israeli embassy would investigate.
Dehran Swarts said the couple were in Addis Ababa, but were due to land in Cape Town on Thursday.
Cape Times