Zambia is heading towards refusing to release on bail five Egyptians and six local citizens accused of “espionage” for entering a restricted area at Lusaka airport, two weeks after the Zambian authorities announced that their plane was seized with weapons, bullets, cash and fake gold.
A district court in the capital, Lusaka, indicted the men on Monday, but Judge Davis Chipwelle decided on Tuesday to decide on their bail request for the next day, after the defense rejected the public prosecutor’s testimony refusing to release them.
Defense lawyer Martha Moshebe told the court, “The prosecution must explain to us why it has refused to release bail for the defendants who have been deprived of their liberty.”
The indictment did not mention the aircraft or the seizures, but lawyers for the defendants said in a statement that they were on a plane that was inspected by Zambia’s Drug Enforcement Administration on August 13 at Lusaka’s main airport.
The administration said that it found about $5.7 million in the plane coming from Cairo, five pistols, 126 bullets, and 602 pieces of suspected gold weighing about 127 kilograms.
But Zambian Minister of Mines, Paul Kapusui, told reporters two days later that laboratory tests of the seized metal ingots showed that despite their shiny appearance, they did not contain gold, but consisted mainly of copper and zinc.
This added to speculation in the Zambia media that some of the suspects may have cheated gold buyers with counterfeit bars.
Egyptian security sources said that the plane, which was seized in Zambia, was inspected by the authorities before leaving Cairo, with the exception of the bags of one of the arrested Egyptians, which is currently being investigated.
On August 20, the Egyptian Journalists Syndicate said that the security forces in Cairo arrested an Egyptian journalist who published a report on the plane that landed in Zambia on the investigative electronic platform (Matassadesh).
2023-08-29 16:49:49
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