Staff Reporter
THE case of Jona Hangula, a 32-year-old Namibian man accused of supporting an extremist terrorist organisation, has significant international importance, as Namibia was greylisted by the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), the global money laundering and terrorist financing watchdog, due to the matter.
This was said by Deputy Commissioner Eimo Dumeni Popyeinawa, head of high-profile investigations within the Namibian Police Force, who said that Namibia as a result, created the anti-terrorism task force to defend itself from such threats.
Other reforms, he said, included the Business and Intellectual Property Authority deregistering companies that did not show records of beneficial ownership, and the Financial Intelligence Centre intensifying its tracking of the flow of funds in and out of the country.
Hangula, a 32-year-old Grootfontein resident, is accused of supporting extremist terrorist organisations such as ISIS in Namibia and allegedly expressed intent to create another “State” in Namibia.
During his testimony, Popyeinawa explained that the investigations in the matter were led by the Namibian Police Anti-Terrorism Task Force, which included a wide variety of agencies such as the Namibia Intelligence Agency, Crime Intelligence, the Criminal Investigations Division, the Financial Intelligence Centre, and NamRA, amongst others.
“My lady, since this case came in Namibia, we received information from the FBI. They warned us that something might happen in Namibia,” Popyeinawa said.
He added that Nampol had received about seven disks from the FBI, which entailed a lot of communications of the suspect, including WhatsApp as well as Facebook messages.
Popyeinawa added that the FBI also had one of their agents secretly working together with the accused person via WhatsApp communications to uncover his plans and stop him in his tracks.
In the discussion with the American agent, who is a protected witness in the case, Hangula expressed that he was willing to leave the country and join the “Black Flag.”
“We wanted to create a state here, you know, even if we are 10 brothers or more, then we can buy some guns, and then we can go to the jungle and we will start fighting later. Allah will increase the number of brothers, that’s how brothers started in Mozambique,” Hangula is alleged to have written to the FBI agent, confirming claims that he supported ISIS in Mozambique.
In addition to this, the commissioner added that when Hangula was arrested in 2019, his phone had also been confiscated, which yielded further information on his alleged dubious plans to create a coup in the country and also expand terrorism throughout the whole SADC region, as he said that many Southern African youth are unemployed and fed up.
The Deputy Commissioner also raised red flags that Hangula had four active passports, which he used, albeit the fact that they had expired on different dates, dating back from 2015 to 2023.
