President Cyril Ramaphosa announced the investigation after questions were raised about the ship. It docked at the Simon’s Town naval base near Cape Town last December and switched off its transponders. In May, the US ambassador to South Africa accused the state of weapons or ammunition for the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine.
The three-person investigative team, led by a judge, found in the report, dated August, that the “Lady R” loaded secret armaments for the army that the country had ordered years ago from a company based in the United Arab Emirates. The delivery was already expected in 2018, “manufacturing, packaging and delivery of the devices was delayed, among other things, by the outbreak of COVID-19 and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict,” said the summary of the report published on Tuesday evening. “South Africa had no control over ship selection.”
The fact that the “Lady R” was subject to US sanctions because of the Russian war of aggression was only noticed in October, when the ship was already underway. Due to the sanctions, the ship was diverted to Simon’s Town at short notice instead of to the originally planned port. There the goods were unloaded for reasons of secrecy under cover of darkness.
The ship turned off the transponders because of the circumstances and “the surveillance of the ship by foreign intelligence services”. “Despite some rumors of armor or weapons being loaded onto the Lady Rthe panel found no evidence for these claims. The available evidence only confirmed that the ship was unloaded and that nothing was loaded,” it said.
#Ukraine #live #ticker #USA #announce #delivery #uranium #ammunition #FAZ