PIENAAR – Five foreign shopkeepers that were arrested last month after they were found with nine illegal firearms and 25 boxes of ammunition and charged with possession of illegal fire-arms, appeared at KaNyamazane Magistrate Court last week and their case has been postponed to April 24.
The arrest comes after the local police station established a project of raiding foreign nationals’ shops, checking out for illegal firearms after it was reported that gunshots were heard on the night of the out- break of the xenophobic attacks at a certain complex where most of the shops are owned by foreign nationals.
The spokesperson forthe local police station, Lt Jabu Ndubane said, “After taking a statement from the public, we decided to conduct a clean-up operation which proved fruitful. In some of the foreign nationals’ shops we found dangerous weapons which include guns and pangas.”
Mpumalanga News learnt that the whole drama started after a Somalian shopkeeper, Mr Abdirahman Omar Mohamed, allegedly shot and killed a leaner of Mayibuye High School and at this stage, the suspect is still at large.
This incident led to some community members to loot shops owned by foreign nationals, which is something that left foreign shopkeepers in shock as they were forced to closed their shops in areas such as KaNyamzane and KaBokweni.
Speaking to Mpumalanga News, the spokesperson of the local police station,
Lt Jabu Ndubane believes that there will be more arrests since they are still busy with investigations to find out where the suspects got the illegal firearms as so far the police have discovered that the were people whose guns were stolen but didn’t report the matter to the police.
