Over 80 alleged UNITA members face deportation

The Namibia government was going ahead with arrangements to deport over 80 alleged UNITA “soldiers and collaborators” who have been detained at a camp near the capital Windhoek for the past eight months without being charged, PANA reported on Thursday. This, despite a recent high court ruling in which one of the accused, Jose Domingos Sikunda, was set free on grounds that the decision to deport him was illegal.

The alleged UNITA “soldiers and collaborators”, accused by the government of having committed murder and mayhem in Namibia’s north-eastern Kavango region, were declared prohibited immigrants and set for deportation on recommendations of the government’s security commission, which the high court recently declared as being defective. The detainees were rounded up in the Kavango region in June and July last year and were secretly held at a security camp for more than a month.

The government has been working with the UNHCR on how best to deport the group and which country would accept them. Meanwhile, home affairs ministry Permanent Secretary Niilo Taapopi refused to comment on Thursday on the high court’s ruling that the continued detention of the men and the intention to deport them was illegal because of the illegality of the commission which determined their fate. However, Attorney General Pendukeni Ithana said the high court ruling applied only to Sikunda and not to the rest of the detainees. The rebel UNITA movement of Angola has been a thorn in the flesh of the Namibian government as it has continuously carried out killings, mayhem, looting and several other atrocities in the Kavango region, the report said.