Africa-Press – Botswana. A Botswana court issued an arrest warrant against former president Ian Khama for alleged illegal possession of weapons, among other charges, even though the former president has been in self-imposed exile in South Africa since 2021.
Judge Mareledi Dipate stated that Khama must be arrested as soon as he enters the country with a view to his transfer before the court.
Ian Khama was initially charged in April in absentia, along with former intelligence chief Isaac Kgosi, former police commissioner Keabetswe Makgophe and deputy permanent police secretary Bruno Paledi, according to The Monitor.
Khama faces 14 charges ranging from illegally possessing a firearm to receiving stolen goods and money laundering, however the warrant only pertains to the charge of illegally possessing weapons.
The Botswana public prosecutor’s office requested Khama’s extradition to face the charges against him, but efforts were unsuccessful. The former president said he would accept this request to “have the opportunity to expose the lies of the President, Mokgweetsi Masisi” against him.
Charges of illegal possession of weapons are punishable by up to ten years in prison in the African country. Khama, son of the first president of Botswana after independence, Seretse Khama, moved to South Africa in November 2021, although he guaranteed that he does not flee justice, denying having asked for asylum or fleeing alleged persecution by his successor, Mokgweetsi Masisi.
The former president told journalists that Masisi had been using state institutions to attack him since his fall in 2019.
Since then, Khama has been traveling the world from South Africa. In January she was in Zambia to visit the late former Zambian President Rupiah Banda, who was suffering from colon cancer.
On that same visit, he went to visit the family of the late founding president of Zambia, Kenneth Kaunda. He also returned to Zambia for Banda’s burial, where he spoke about his persecution in his country.
In March, Botswana’s Directorate of Intelligence and Security (DIS) detained his twin brothers, Tshekedi Khama and Anthony Khama, as part of an investigation into Khama’s whereabouts. The twins were later released.
Since June Khama has been to the UK twice.
The former President held office between 2008 and 2018 and, although he supported his Vice President, Mokgweetsi Masisi, in that year’s elections, he subsequently distanced himself from him, accusing him of authoritarianism. Masisi was Vice President from 2014 to 2018.
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