Reuter
Sipho Ngwema, spokesman for the elite Scorpions crime-busting unit, said four people detained on Wednesday after a raid on the Cape Town office of International Intelligence Risk Management were released without charge.
"We are following up the information that we got from them. We suspect that they were recruiting hundreds of mercenaries. We are not releasing any specific information on what countries were involved," he added.
A security industry source told Reuters yesterday that in addition to bidding for the Zimbabwe contract, International Intelligence Risk Management had a contract to supply hundreds of security personnel to Iraq.
Recruiting mercenaries for military operations overseas is illegal under South Africa's Regulation of Foreign Military Assistance Act, adopted in 1998 to dispel the country's long association with mercenary activities around the world.
Former soldiers blooded in apartheid-era operations in Namibia and Angola have found lucrative work abroad as either "dogs of war" or security guards, especially since work became scarce at home with the advent of democracy in 1994.
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http://www.theindependent.co.zw/news/2004/August/Friday20/1340.html
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