{"id":4528,"date":"2016-07-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amabhungane.org\/amabhungane\/stories\/senior-lesotho-politician-denies-death-threat-against-terrorist-us-ambassador\/"},"modified":"2016-07-21T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-21T00:00:00","slug":"senior-lesotho-politician-denies-death-threat-against-terrorist-us-ambassador","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/senior-lesotho-politician-denies-death-threat-against-terrorist-us-ambassador\/","title":{"rendered":"Senior Lesotho politician denies death threat against ‘terrorist’ US ambassador"},"content":{"rendered":"

Picture:\u00a0Bokang Ramats\u00e9lla, Lesotho Times<\/em><\/p>\n

In a further sign of the mounting political intolerance in Lesotho, a senior member of one of Lesotho\u2019s coalition government parties has made what appears to be a veiled death threat in a radio broadcast against the United States ambassador in the kingdom, Matthew Harrington.<\/p>\n

Contacted for verification on Wednesday, Bokang Ramats\u00e9lla denied issuing a death threat but described the envoy as a terrorist and said he would organise \u201ca big protest to force him out of my country\u201d.<\/p>\n

Ramats\u00e9lla is a national executive member of the Lesotho People\u2019s Congress, one of seven parties in the ruling coalition.<\/p>\n

AmaBhungane has established that Harrington has indeed left Lesotho, but the embassy said in a statement that he was taking leave that was previously scheduled.<\/p>\n

It said it was aware of the threats made against him.<\/p>\n

Ramats\u00e9lla\u2019s thinly veiled threat emerges from a transcript of a statement he made on Thursday last week on the news programme Masokotso on Tsenolo, a private radio station aligned with the government.<\/p>\n

In this, he accused Harrington of trying to overthrow the government and said: \u201cHa mmuso osa mo leleke re tla itelekella eena hoseng joalo o tla fella hona american embassy mono and taba eno ea hore o tla fella mono re tla e etsa hobane (If the government doesn\u2019t force [Harrington] out of the country he will meet his fate at the embassy and no one will know what happened to him).\u201d<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cNthoeno ea hore o tla fella moo re tla e etsa hobane re tla e shoela, ha se rona ba pele ba ho shoela naha ena . ke a tsamaea mona a pesotse limpa mona hohle moo a tsamaeang agenda ea hae ele regime change (The issue of his fate will be settled by us, and if need be, we will die for it. We are not going to allow him to walk around and spread the agenda of regime change.)\u201d<\/p>\n

He also said that to force Harrington out, he was prepared to undergo a long jail sentence.<\/p>\n

“We will not allow him to destabilise my government and my country”<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

In a clear reference to former Lesotho prime minister Tom Thabane, who has fled the country, Ramats\u00e9lla said that he would not allow Harrington to topple a government that he and others had worked hard to rescue from \u201ccriminals\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will not allow him [Harrington] to destabilise my government and my country,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Ramats\u00e9lla\u2019s extraordinary attack follows escalating political repression in Lesotho following the publication of an article in the Lesotho Times <\/em>about an alleged R40-million exit plan for the head of the Lesotho defence force, Tlali Kamoli.<\/p>\n

Following its publication, the editor of the Times<\/em>, Lloyd Mutungamiri, was shot in the face in an apparent assassination attempt, while the paper\u2019s proprietor, Basildon Peta, has been charged with crimen injuria and malicious defamation.<\/p>\n

Peta was due to appear in the Maseru Magistrate\u2019s Court yesterday, but the case was postponed after his lawyer told the magistrate that he could not be present because he feared for his safety.<\/p>\n

Peta lives in Johannesburg. Mutungamiri is recovering in a South African hospital after undergoing two major operations to reconstruct his face.<\/p>\n

“Deliberately fabricated stories”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In previous statements on Masokotso, Ramats\u00e9lla has accused Peta of being a CIA agent and Harrington of being his handler.<\/p>\n

He alleged that the two men had worked together in Zimbabwe in about 2002, when Peta fled the country, to effect regime change.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe US ambassador, who was in Zimbabwe then, worked with Peta to spread lies in Zimbabwe and things got very tense. Peta was a US spy and CIA agent and deliberately fabricated stories to discredit Mugabe,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

He accused Peta of using the Lesotho Times and his other publication in Lesotho, the Sunday Express, to destabilise government. In a broadcast on Mosokotso last month, he was heard to say that if he was the prime minister, Pakalitha Mosisili, he would \u201cdefinitely kill him [Peta]\u201d.<\/p>\n

In his broadcast last week, Ramats\u00e9lla claimed that Harrington approached Lesotho\u2019s minister of defence and national security, Tseliso Mokhosi, and told him that the Americans do not want to work with Prime Minister Mosisili.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe has been seen behind terrorist non-governmental organisations which went to villages to influence communities to say that Lesotho doesn’t need the army,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

“Did not consult the authorities”<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

In a telephone interview on Wednesday, Ramats\u00e9lla said Harrington was a terrorist. Asked to explain this, he said the ambassador \u201cdid not consult the authorities\u201d.<\/p>\n

Asked why he might face jail in his efforts to deal with Harrington, he said he would organise a \u201cbig march\u201d to force him out. He did not explain how organising a protest would earn him a prison term.<\/p>\n

In its statement today, the US embassy in Maseru said it was aware of [Ramats\u00e9lla\u2019s] comments.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile discussion of policy differences is entirely appropriate, direct threats against specific diplomats are unacceptable.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe have full confidence in the government to fulfill its obligation under the Vienna Convention to ensure the safety of diplomats assigned to Lesotho. The ambassador is taking a previously scheduled vacation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Lesotho\u2019s minister of communications, science and technology, Khotso Letsatsi, paid a surprise visit to the Lesotho Times this morning, in which he demanded to know the whereabouts of the reporter who wrote the offending article, Keiso Mohloboli.<\/p>\n

It is understood that the newspaper\u2019s staff did not supply Mohloboli\u2019s contact details.<\/p>\n

<\/a>
\nThe amaBhungane Centre for Investigative Journalism produced this story. Like it? Be an amaB supporter<\/a> and help us do more. Know more? Send us <\/em>a tip-off.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A veiled threat against Lesotho’s US ambassador has been revealed from a radio transcript, showing growing political intolerance in the kingdom.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":22368,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-stories"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4528"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4528\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/further.co.za\/amabwp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}