‘Mutineers’ make bid for freedom

LESOTHO soldiers snatched from the streets and locked up in military jails after being accused of plotting a mutiny have launched a new bid for freedom.

This week, their lawyers filed a notice of appeal against last month’s ruling by Lesotho High Court Judge Semapo Peete that they should stay in jail despite his finding that their arrests flouted the law.

In his ruling last month, Peete said that during the arrest and detention of alleged mutineers, the Lesotho Defence Force had employed tactics typically used by apartheid security forces.

Since May, when coup plotter Lieutenant-General Tlali Kamoli was controversially reinstated as commander of the force, more than 50 soldiers were bundled into military vehicles and held at secret sites until their families went to court to force the military to produce their bodies or release them.

The detainees were accused of conspiring to kill Kamoli and replace him with his predecessor, Lieutenant-General Maaparankoe Mahao.

Kamoli tried to stage a coup in August last year against former prime minister Tom Thabane, who was replaced by a coalition led by Pakalitha Mosisili after snap elections in February.

In terms of a peace deal brokered by South African Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa on behalf of the Southern African Development Community it was agreed that both Kamoli and Mahao would quit their posts.

But Mosisili unexpectedly reinstated Kamoli.

When Mahao’s alleged mutineers against Kamoli appeared in court last month, Peete called their arrests “ambush-like” but ruled they could not be deemed illegal just because “formal requirements” had been “grossly flouted”.

He also deplored that the men had arrived in court in leg-irons, which “remind one of the days of slavery when men and women were tightly shackled and shipped across the Atlantic”.

All accused said they had been assaulted or tortured and some appeared bleeding in court, prompting Peete to order the army to “stop forthwith any acts or conduct that is torturous, inhuman or degrading”.

Mahao was killed by soldiers on June 25 while driving with two nephews on a lonely road near his farm, 30km from the capital, Maseru.

The defence force says he pointed a firearm at the soldiers sent to arrest him. His family insists he was assassinated.

This week, a team of investigators sent by the SADC arrived in Lesotho to probe his death and the wave of deten-

❛ This is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa where suspects could disappear mysteriously

tions that preceded it.

Grounds for this week’s appeal against the alleged mutineers’ detention include Peete’s admission that they were arrested “under circumstances as if they were kidnapped”.

“This is reminiscent of apartheid South Africa, where suspects could disappear mysteriously — some to later reappear grossly maimed,” he said.

Mosisili’s senior private secretary, Mamello Morrison, after initially requesting to reflect Mosisili’s response to the allegations against his defence force, declined to respond to detailed questions.

“The Sunday Times can write what it likes,” she said.

Defence force spokesman Major Ntlele Ntoi “absolutely denied” the detainees had been abducted or tortured.