Post by cjm on Mar 14, 2015 7:52:11 GMT
Johannesburg (AFP) - South Africa was one of the first countries in the world to ban mercenaries but remains a major supplier of military instructors, some of them from the time of the brutal apartheid regime.
Former Koevoet officer Leon Lotz, who was relatively well-known in South Africa, was one of them.
On Wednesday, he was killed in a friendly fire incident in northeast Nigeria, where a regional force has been battling Boko Haram insurgents.
The Koevoet was a South African special forces unit tasked in the 1980s with putting down the Southwest African People's Organisation (SWAPO) liberation movement in occupied Namibia.
Lotz was 59 when he was killed, according to Netwerk24, one of the few websites written in Afrikaans, the language of the white South African minority.
His wife, Almari, was quoted as telling the site that her husband "was with some of his brothers-in-arms who have walked a path with him for many years".
news.yahoo.com/sa-mercenaries-nigeria-apartheid-era-veterans-still-finding-235235687.html
Former Koevoet officer Leon Lotz, who was relatively well-known in South Africa, was one of them.
On Wednesday, he was killed in a friendly fire incident in northeast Nigeria, where a regional force has been battling Boko Haram insurgents.
The Koevoet was a South African special forces unit tasked in the 1980s with putting down the Southwest African People's Organisation (SWAPO) liberation movement in occupied Namibia.
Lotz was 59 when he was killed, according to Netwerk24, one of the few websites written in Afrikaans, the language of the white South African minority.
His wife, Almari, was quoted as telling the site that her husband "was with some of his brothers-in-arms who have walked a path with him for many years".
news.yahoo.com/sa-mercenaries-nigeria-apartheid-era-veterans-still-finding-235235687.html