'Mercenary': Friendship act

2003-08-03 11:55

Johannesburg - A French-born South African, the first person to be convicted here for involvement in mercenary activity, told a Sunday newspaper he acted "only out of friendship with the Ivory Coast government."

Francois Richard Rouget was on Friday sentenced to five years in prison or a R100 000 fine after pleading guilty to involvement in mercenary activities in Ivory Coast.

"I acted only out of friendship with the Ivory Coast government... I still do not believe it was a crime as I acted at the request of a legitimate government," he told the Johannesburg-based Sunday Times.

Rouget, 44, was the first to be charged and convicted of violating South Africa's Foreign Military Assistance Act. The 1998 law prohibits any citizen from participating in foreign conflicts without government approval.

The naturalised South African of French origin told the newspaper he had merely acted as an intermediary for 12 South Africans, recruited as pilots and ground troops to participate in mercenary acts in Ivory Coast.

"I have done no soldiering since 1989," he told the newspaper.

$6 700 a month

The South Africans trained members of the Ivory Coast military and were involved in a number of combat actions for a payment of $6 700 a month.

"I am not a professional mercenary," said Rouget, who had served under the notorious French mercenary Bob Denard after he mounted a coup in the Indian Ocean's Comoro Islands before establishing himself in South Africa in 1987.

Rouget said he decided to plead guilty in the court case heard in Pretoria to avoid a year-long wait for a trial which would have forced him to surrender his passport and would prevented him from running his hunting business.

"I am now totally free and have paid my dues," he said.

Ivory Coast, a former French colony that was once a model of stability in west Africa, descended into civil war last September, when renegade troops mainly from the predominantly Muslim north staged a rebellion.

On July 4, the warring parties formally declared the war over, after three erstwhile rebel groups joined a unity government in line with a French-brokered peace accord reached in January.

- AFP