Suspects handed over to Angolan army

Namibia has handed a group of 83 suspected UNITA rebels to the Angolan army in a move running contrary to the spirit of
international conventions, the Namibian Society for Human Rights (NSHR) said on Thursday.

The 83 men were paraded before television cameras in the Namibian border town of Rundu two weeks ago. On Thursday, Defence Minister Erkki Nghimtina told 'The Namibian' newspaper that the men, captured in the tense border region by security forces, had been turned over to Angolan army officials in
Rundu.

The newspaper quoted Nghimtina as saying, "they are not war prisoners, they are criminals who are killing people at night. They are not soldiers per se."

Che Ngaringombe, an NSHR spokesman, told IRIN: "There has been no public statement about this situation other than what we have seen in the newspaper. We do not believe that this is in the spirit of the Geneva Conventions. If these people are prisoners of war, they can only be returned once their country is at peace. If they are criminals, as the authorities claim them to be, then they should be charged and tried in Namibia under
Namibian law. If they ran away from the war, no matter whose side they were on, they should be given refugee status."

'The Namibian' said "there have been reports that men handed to the Angolan authorities have been summarily executed in recent weeks" since Namibia granted the Angolan army the right to use its territory in a drive to flush UNITA rebels from their traditional strongholds in southern Angola.

Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the human rights group, Amnesty International, declined to comment other than say their representatives in Namibia were looking into the case. Amnesty said it would protest if it found the men could be subjected to torture or execution.