Imtiaz Sooliman – Sooliman talks about the death of Korkie in Yemen
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AI: Transcript ©
This week was the devastating news of the death of pirk Koki just
before he was about to be released here to South Africa, and the
group that we're negotiating his release with gift of the givers
and here in studio with us, we've got imcha Suleiman, who's going to
be talking to us about, well, try get to the bottom of what actually
happened. It's good to have you in studio and welcome. Thank you.
What happened? Does anybody know as yet, what happened to Pier
Koki? Look, we have only one version or two versions of the
story, because there were no witnesses. Remember, Yemen is a
very remote area. Network is a problem. Communication is a
problem. Infrastructure is a problem. Sometimes it takes 12 to
14 hours for us, at that time to get a message to al Qaeda, you
have to physically drive over 40 hours to give a message, because
there's no network, in this case, in early hours of the morning when
they are know what this is. The only people who can tell us a true
story are the American troops and al Qaeda, the militants. There is
no independent verification from a third party, so really, we will
not know if there is, was, if there is a third type side to the
story. We have to look at the two official sides and try to figure
out from there, what happened. Yeah, but you know, I suppose
there are many doubts out there about the Americans. Would they
really shoot one of their own? Nobody would shoot some one of
their own. But remember, war, you have friendly fire. You have
mistaken. It's dark. You don't know who's who, and it is a
possibility you could shoot even your own troops that are with you.
It's happened so many times in what situation where you shoot
your own people, and given the tension, the stress, and suddenly
they say the dog barked and you get caught. Suddenly, what a
surprise. You can tend to panic. Even though you may be a seasoned
soldier, things can go wrong. Yeah, you must be particularly
devastated, because, I mean, this was a day before he was about to
be released you as the gift of the givers were negotiating with his
hostage takers. I mean, he'd been gone, or he'd been held for 558
days, and this was just the last day. How did you feel when you
heard this news? It was disbelief, you know, because the worst thing
for me was I gave Yolanda so much of hope that did the night before.
I mean, I sat and spoke to her for three hours on Friday night,
because she was very anxious. She thought of all these things, will
it go wrong? Will it help me fine? How will we get him out? Know, a
lot of questions. Saturday morning at 5am she sends me another
message, and we started the discussion again. Eventually, I
finished off at 559 saying, yolani, the waiting is almost
over. I put that kind of positive message into her, yeah. Three days
before that, I told her, You like him home for Christmas. You guys
will go to the mountain, to the to the bush, and you have bonding
type you give that kind of hope. 803, I get a message out of the
blue from Pierce uncle, who I haven't spoken to for six months.
He said, Have you heard Pierre has been shot? I just woke What a
shock. I said, Where did you get this message from? He said,
Pierre's sister. I said, How does she know? He said, You landed to
her. I said, then there's something wrong with the story. It
can't be possible. I just bring it to her. It's impossible. And then
few minutes later, the police hostage negotiator phones me and
says Pierre is dead. And I questioned him in several ways.
Where's the verification? Who saw it? Where's the body? And then he
says the American industry told him directly, and they have
photographic verification, it is pure coffee. The problem with all
this is we didn't know where the hostages were. But to carry on the
story, on Friday night, I had a premonition whilst I was speaking
to Anas. I said, Anas, you guys got to go in early tomorrow
morning. I have a feeling the Americans are going to attack
tomorrow morning, because they have a three day deadline, and Al
Qaeda is definitely going to execute the American guy, and
Americans are not going to allow that. If I said, let's hope for
the best, but prepare for the worst. If, if p is not there, we
have no problem. But if, for some reason, Pierre is with the
American something goes wrong, he may get killed in the process. And
that's what happens on my one of my message to my Saturday morning
is what we discussed last night. Happened?
How long were you negotiating for from January 10? Well, we started
off on the seventh of January for Yolandi. Yeah, for Yolandi. Okay.
10th. We finished with her on the 13th, Monday January. We started
for Pia, and we finished off on the 26th of November. 26 of
November, we were given the clearance to take Pia out, and
thereafter, it was no negotiations with them that was done. It was
now between us and the tribal leaders to finalize their
arrangements, and they needed a payment because they charge you a
fee for what they do. Let's leave it there. Ms olimon, thank you
very much for joining us, for talking to us about this
devastating story of Pierre Koki being killed in Yemen just a day
before he was meant to be coming home to his family here in South
Africa. All right, 26 minutes past six.