Terror claims untrue - Pta

2004-08-05 07:20

Pretoria - Claims that South African tourist destinations had been under threat of terrorist attack were dismissed as untrue by the government on Wednesday.

It was reported on Tuesday that two South Africans in Pakistani custody had told interrogators they had planned to attack tourist sites in Johannesburg.

"They had hatched a plot to carry out terrorist attacks on Johannesburg's main tourist sites," a security official who is familiar with the interrogation, told AFP.

The pair - Abu Bakar and Zubair Ismail - were arrested last week in the eastern Pakistani city of Gujrat along with Tanzanian al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani, indicted by the United States over the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam.

'Speculative'

On Wednesday morning, foreign affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa refused to confirm the reports.

"There has been no independent confirmation of the reports, therefore in our view this remains speculative," he said. He added that the South African embassy in Islamabad is awaiting permission to visit the prisoners and has no details of the investigation.

"We have not been told anything," he said.

'No reason to panic'

Pakistani security agencies did not have information on the supposed terror threats, government spokesperson Joel Netshitenzhe said in Pretoria.

"If there were any such information, the first people to know would have been their counterparts in South Africa," Netshitenzhe told reporters.

National Intelligence Agency director general Vusi Mavimbela said there was no need for South Africans to panic.

- SAPA