Amid rising incidents of cash-in-transit heists in the country, the Directorate of Intelligence Security Services (DIS) has rebutted former president Ian Khama’s assertions that the intelligence agency is harassing him by linking him to one of the heists.
After winning his case against President Mokgweetsi Masisi and his government over the refusal to allow him access to government-owned transport, the former president believes the DISS is out to get him because of his triumph. “It is no one’s fault that the judgements are coming out in this manner because the outcomes are self-inflicted due to the regime’s abuse of the rule of law and our constitution,” Khama said.
In what he calls the latest episode of a plot by the DIS, Khama said last week, there was a planned attempt by the directorate to raid or arrest him, and, to implicate innocent members of his private security in recent episodes of cash-in-transit heists in Botswana.
“They have further tried to link me to weapons that they claim to have confiscated from their suspects, which weapons do not and have never belonged to me or any of my security agents,” Khama wrote.
Botswana’s fourth president said that when the DIS was conceived and proposed by the Botswana Police during the time of former President Mogae and implemented during his time, it was meant to provide intelligence information to the State on matters of terrorism and high crimes that the transformed Botswana Police Service would not be best placed or equipped to deal with. “It was not meant to harass and antagonize innocent citizens as it is happening now, or to serve or ‘cava’ selfish interests of any individual,” wrote Khama.
The DIS released a statement on the 22nd of September taking note of the comments made by the former president of Botswana and said Khama wrongfully alleges that he is being harassed by the Directorate.
DIS public relations director, Edward Robert in a statement said: “It should be noted that it is quite normal for former presidents to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the Directorate regarding some aspects their personal security.”
Robert said the DIS, like Khama, is subject to the direction and requirements of the laws of Botswana. “Contrary to the former president’s allegations of harassment and plot to harm him, the public should rest assured that the Directorate will continue to be professional in its provision of personal security to former presidents Mogae and Khama will above all continue to fulfil its mandate with total fidelity to the laws of Botswana,” Robert said in the statement.
The patron of the Botswana Patriotic Front (BPF) also added that, besides it being his democratic right as a Motswana to associate freely with whomever he chooses to, he saw the need to join sections of our society who found that Botswana’s long-cherished ideals and tradition of democracy under the Botswana Democratic Party (BDP) had been lost and desecrated under Masisi’s BDP, where intolerance, vindictiveness and abuse of office and state resources, disregard for the rule of law and the welfare of citizens has become the norm.
