NSHR claims kidnap plot

THE National Society for Human Rights claims Government has given Angola the right to kidnap its head for prosecution in that country.

The allegations were immediately dismissed as false by Government officials.The Ministry of Justice called a media briefing yesterday afternoon and released a copy of the document signed with Angola to the media.The Angolan news agency Angop reported last week that justice experts from the two countries were analysing the level of difficulty in the implementation of various accords signed between Namibia and Angola.The agenda also included talks on the extradition of Angolan prisoners in Namibia.NSHR executive director Phil ya Nangoloh claimed at a media briefing yesterday that Justice Minister Pendukeni Iivula-Ithana signed a deal with her Angolan counterpart during her visit to that country last week to have him kidnapped through the infamous practice of ‘extraordinary rendition’.Rendition is a covert and unlawful operation under which even an innocent person may be forcibly transferred to a state where he or she has committed no crime.Ya Nangoloh claimed that the deal relates to the discovery and subsequent publication on September 9 last year of a dossier about mass graves as well as other grave human rights abuses along Namibia’s northern and northeastern border between 1994 and 2003.’We are reliably informed that these furtive efforts are being spearheaded not by the Namibian Government per se. These efforts are allegedly the work of a reactionary and highly intolerant faction of the ruling Swapo Party. ‘They are not even that of the entire Swapo Party per se. This clique, we are told, consists of the top leadership of the Swapo Party Youth League (SPYL) and the Swapo Party Secretary General as well as the office of the former Namibian President,’ Ya Nangoloh claimed.He alleged that the extraordinary rendition was ‘presumably centred on revenge for our 2006 petition to the International Criminal Court (ICC)’.The Ministry of Justice called a media briefing yesterday afternoon and released a copy of the document signed with Angola to the media.NSHR approached the ICC in 2006 to have former President Sam Nujoma answer certain questions about alleged missing persons.SPYL Secretary Elijah Ngurare also denied the allegations.Ya Nangoloh challenged Ithana to prosecute him in Namibia ‘where I have the full right to defend myself and where the judiciary is still independent unlike the kangaroo courts of Angola’.He called on her ‘to publicly deny or confirm the allegations’ the NSHR made.