TRNUC hears one witness in open session |22 April 2021

Mr Ragain (Photo: Joena Meme)

Former high ranking army officer, Joe Ragain, appeared before the Truth, Reconciliation and National Unity Commission (TRNUC) once again yesterday, this time as a witness in the case of Joseph Edward.

In setting down his complaint, Mr Edward had claimed that he was detained and arrested at Grand Police for nine months between 1988 and 1989, without charge.

Mr Edward had established that he and a group of prisoners managed to escape from the Grand Police military facility, fleeing to Silhouette where they were captured and returned by military officers.

Due to his involvement in the operation, the commission called on Mr Ragain to provide his explanation of the operation and why the army was tasked with searching for a group of civilians.

“Although I have forgotten the date, I recall that some prisoners escaped from Grand Police and were given ultimatums to surrender themselves but they did not pay attention to these announcements[...] on radio and TV ,” explained Mr Ragain.

“It was around 1pm and I was at the Pointe Larue army camp when I received a call directly from Silhouette from a man who informed me that the prisoners were on Silhouette. From there I informed the SPDF headquarters and I received orders to mount an operation to apprehend these prisoners on Silhouette.”

Along with four military officers, Mr Ragain headed to Silhouette island in a helicopter and upon reaching the island they were guided to the place where the prisoners were hiding with the help of the civilian who had made the initial call.

“Our operation was only to apprehend the prisoners and hand them over to the authorities, that was all,”clarified Mr Ragain.

According to Mr Ragain, the soldiers were told that the prisoners were armed with machetes. Mr Ragain said that he gave the officers permission to fire warning shots if the prisoners failed to comply with orders to scare them and make sure they remain in place as they were captured.

“We encircled them, I was the first to come out and told them to stay put, not to cause any problems, not to run and that we were there to apprehend them but they did not listen. They tried to escape and this is when we fired some warning shots in the air,” Mr Ragain recounted to the commissioners.

While some prisoners remained in place after the shots, a few kept trying to run away and there was an incident in which one of the prisoners, Dave Benoiton, was hit with a stray bullet, he went on to add.

According to Mr Ragain, the shot was not aimed at and intended for the prisoner and he assumes that it was one of the warning shots that must have ricocheted off a rock or other hard surface.

The injured prisoner, who later apparently recovered from his injury, was brought to Mahé in the helicopter while the remaining prisoners were transported back to the main island in a Coast Guard vessel.

“I personally escorted them from Silhouette to Mahé where I placed them in the hands of the authorities. There was a transport from headquarters that was waiting for them and I do not know if they were transported to Bel Eau or Grand Police, but I made my way back to Pointe Larue.”

“This is a bit of what happened, but it is a shame that the guy who named me during the interview said that if there had been no civilians, we would have killed them because it is not nice to make these types of assumptions,” said Mr Ragain.

Mr Ragain noted that a few of the escaped prisoners were former trained soldiers.

As to the question on why it was the army who went to apprehend the escaped prisoners rather than the police, Mr Ragain said that he was simply following orders and it was not his place to question the orders he had been given.
“As long as it is an order that is lawful then I have to respect it and follow through with it. Because the army is also an aid to civilian authority particularly in emergency situations where the army can intervene.”

Asked whether he would have followed an order to kill someone,  Mr Ragain provided a definitive no.

“I am a trained officer, from second lieutenant and up until I retired as a Colonel. In my training it was clear that we have international humanitarian law which explains how to treat civilians, an armed personnel or combatant but it would not be normal for someone to just tell you to go and kill someone; it does not work like that,” he explained.

The hearings which followed Mr Ragain’s were undertaken in closed sessions.

Elsie Pointe