SA men brought back from Russia pose safety risk: Makhubela

An airplane seen at the OR Tambo International Airport .

Former SA Ambassador to Portugal Dr Kingsley Makhubela says police need to interrogate the men who were allegedly lured into fighting alongside Russian forces in Ukraine.

This follows the arrival of four out of the 17 men at OR Tambo International Airport earlier on Wednesday.

In November last year, the South African government received distress calls from the 17 men who were trapped in Ukraine. It is believed they were lured to Russia under the pretext of lucrative employment contracts.

“Now that they are back home, they need to be debriefed and I think the details will come back. I find it very difficult to understand that the Russians would have kept them for so long against their will. I suspect they had been contracted because the Russians are signing contracts with these mercenaries. But we need to find more details now that they are back before we start to fall into this belief that indeed, they were led under false pretext and yet maybe they were willing participants in this conflict. “

Makhubela says the men who have been brought back from Russia pose a safety risk to the country. He says police need to establish what type of training the men received.

“Now we know from the reports that we’ve been reading, the risk related to people who have been trained with military skills that they have a tendency for some of these people to get involved in criminal activities. Notably, the cash in transit heists. It’s said most of them or some of them who are involved in it have been trained militarily in one way or another. So, it raises serious security risks for the country, that’s why it’s very important for security agencies to get to the bottom of this and understand what has transpired and to understand the level of training to see how we’re going to manage these people moving forward.”