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Africa: Subsaharan
SA police 'foiled terrorist plot'
2004-05-27
South Africa's police chief has said his officers revealed a plot linked to al-Qaeda to disrupt April's elections. National Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi said a number of people from outside South Africa had been arrested on 9 April, five days before the poll.
Most likely they wanted to elect a new government that would pull all those South African troops out of Iraq.......oh wait..
He told parliament's security and safety committee that those detained had had "evil intentions" against South Africa - though he gave few details.
"I can say no more."
Mr Selebi said the police operation had led to arrests in Jordan and Syria. Reports from Jordan in April said police had foiled a chemical plot, arresting six people and killing another four. Officials said the plot involved attacking the intelligence department in Amman, using trucks loaded with 20 metric tons of chemicals and possibly causing the deaths of thousands of people.
Hummm, we haven't heard much more about that, have we?
Mr Selebi said police kept quiet about the arrests over the election period. "We arrested some people who had evil intentions towards this country," he said. "We did not tell anybody. he result is that you saw in Jordan, in and around those days, a number of people arrested who were called al-Qaeda. A number of people were also arrested in Syria as a result of our operation."
Interesting
He added that as part of the operation British police had found "boxes and boxes" of South African passports at a London home, but refused to elaborate.
We've heard rumors al-Qaeda was using SA as a support base, looks like the SA police took them seriously. Wonder what was going on?
Posted by:Steve

#1  Additional: Police Commissioner Jackie Selebi told Parliament South Africa had arrested and deported several people linked to the al-Qaida terror network, a newspaper reported Thursday.
The Star, a Johannesburg daily, said Selebi told the National Assembly's safety and security committe on Wednesday that the arrest days before the April 14 general elections here also prompted arrests of other al-Qaida suspects in Jordan, Syria and Britain. "We arrested some people who had evil intentions against this country - we did not tell anybody - five days before the election. We got these people to leave," the newspaper quoted Selebie as telling the committee. "In part of this operation, in London, the British police found boxes and boxes of South African passports in the home of one of these people," Selebi said.
The commissioner did not give any specifics on what action the al-Qaida suspects planned in South Africa nor did he explain why the government did not disclose the arrests until now. Selebi told the committee he was disclosing the arrests as an example of the battle faced by government in stamping out corruption in the Department of Home Affairs, which issues passports.


So it was just a catch and release program. Damm.
Posted by: Steve   2004-05-27 10:55:38 AM  

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