Cape Town - The South African National Defence Force on Tuesday rejected reports that Sudan held South Africa to ransom to prevent the arrest of President Omar al-Bashir by threatening SANDF troops in Darfur.
“The South African National Defence Force has noted with utter dismay the reports in various media alleging that SANDF troops are being held hostage in Sudan. There is no iota of truth in these allegations,” said SANDF spokesman Siphiwe Dlamini.
“The SANDF did not come under any threat during this period.”
He was responding to an online media report that Sudanese troops had held 1 400 South African soldiers serving in the UN-AU Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) hostage as a diplomatic crisis around the potential arrest of Bashir in South Africa escalated.
It said Sudanese troops surrounded their South African counterparts in the western Sudanese region and only withdrew once Bashir had landed in Khartoum on Monday.
But according to Dlamini, the situation in the area of North Darfur where the South African troops are stationed was calm on Monday.
“The SANDF commander in the Kutum region conducts regular meetings with the Government of Sudan (GOS) commanders in the area of responsibility, with the last meeting held on Monday 15 June, 2015. Good working relationships between the GOS and other forces is the order of the day,” he said.
Bashir is wanted by the International Criminal Court on charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity stemming from the conflict in Darfur. Arrest warrants against him were issued in 2009 and 2010. As a party to the Rome Statute, South Africa was obliged to arrest him after he arrived in the country at the weekend to attend the AU summit in Johannesburg.
The Southern African Litigation Centre successfully went to court to secure an order forcing the government to arrest him. But after it was handed down by the Pretoria High Court on Monday afternoon, legal counsel for the government confirmed that Bashir had flown out of the country.
ANA