The media and certain political parties appear to be up in arms over the so-called failure of the Hawks, crime intelligence and the State Security Agency (SSA) to report on their alleged monitoring of an al-Qaeda training camp in South Africa.

This is a no-brainer.

Our top police units and SSA work with police and intelligence units from around the world and very seldom share information as it compromises their investigations.

This is not only applicable to local units but those involved in combatting terrorism around the world. It is the way that these units HAVE TO OPERATE. If they were to leak information it would compromise not only their assets on the ground but future intelligence gathering and — where applicable — arrests.

The good news is that I have stumbled upon a Wikileksoosniks report which contains a telegram sent by a commander in the field to al-Qaeda head Ayman al-Zawahiri who took over from Osama bin Laden.

It reads :

Supreme Commander

I note with regret that we are unable to supply you with any of the recruits who trained in South Africa for the following reasons :

1. They are all overweight!

2. When told to order supplies they did an “arms” deal which cost us billions and all we have to show for it are submarines on bricks and aircraft that nobody can fly. Their budget was $12 567 which they overshot by $2.2 billion.

3. When accounting asked for vouchers they said they would only submit them to a commission of inquiry (whatever that is).

4. When we stopped their pay they went on strike. Soldiers on strike? Never heard of such a thing.

5. They put in a request that our main airforce base in Yemen be used as a place where the wedding guests of one soldier could land (are they being serious?)

6. Ever since they’ve been back there have been shootouts with both the police and the traffic police — where did they learn this?

For the above and many other reasons (too numerous to list here) please don’t allow our recruits to be trained in South Africa again. They are picking up extraordinary habits probably unprecedented elsewhere on the planet.

We pride ourselves on delivering maximum firepower to any target on any given day.

All this lot has achieved is getting themselves fired.

Yours incredibly sincerely,

Ground Commander

Pakistan Tribal Area

Author

  • Mike Trapido is a criminal attorney and publicist having also worked as an editor and journalist. He was born in Johannesburg and attended HA Jack and Highlands North High Schools. He married Robyn in 1984 (Mrs Traps, aka "the government") and has three sons (who all look suspiciously like her ex-boss). He was a counsellor on the JCCI for a year around 1992. His passions include Derby County, Blue Bulls, Orlando Pirates, Proteas and Springboks. He takes Valium in order to cope with Bafana Bafana's results. Practice Michael Trapido Attorney (civil and criminal) 011 022 7332 Facebook

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Michael Trapido

Mike Trapido is a criminal attorney and publicist having also worked as an editor and journalist. He was born in Johannesburg and attended HA Jack and Highlands North High Schools. He married Robyn...

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