'We know they're alive'

2008-01-17 07:19

Johannesburg - The SA government's efforts to find four men missing in Iraq will be guided by their families and their employer, the Department of Foreign Affairs said on Wednesday.

It was reacting to reports that the men's employer had advised their wives to consider having them declared legally dead.

Foreign Affairs spokesperson Ronnie Mamoepa pointed out that the country's courts could not declare anyone dead, but only presumed dead.

Andre Durant, Callie Scheepers, Hardus Greeff and Johann Enslen went missing in Iraq on December 10 2006 when they were flagged down at a roadblock north of Baghdad.

In a phone call home 11 days later, Durant told his wife Lourika he was okay, sent his love to his children, then aged 8, 6 and 2, and said he would be released soon, according to a website set up to find him.

"We never heard from them ever since. All we need is for the kidnappers to contact us," wrote Lourika Durant.

At the time of their disappearance the men were employed by SafeNet Security Services, a company contracted by the US Department of Defence and registered in the British Virgin Islands.

It was the men's employers, and not the SA government, who had been involved in negotiations with their abductors, said Mamoepa.

However, the government would continue to work through its mission in Jordan - it does not have a mission in Iraq - in conjunction with the men's employer to "find an amicable resolution and bring about closure" in the matter.

The SABC reported that the men's wives had indicated their reluctance to have their husbands declared dead at this stage.

The women reportedly said they would meet with their husbands' employer, possibly on Friday, to discuss this and other issues.

Five Iraqis abducted with the South African men were released days after the incident.

In an interview with CNN ten months later, Enslen's wife Marie said the men had been protecting a convoy of water and food en route to an American army base.

When they were stopped at a roadblock by men in police uniform, they did not suspect anything was amiss and got out of their cars, she said.

"We have thought about death already but we know in our hearts they are still alive. But there is no proof. No proof," Scheepers' wife, Retha, told the television station at the time.

- SAPA