Arrested by Drunken Soldiers
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Submitted by Andy Briggs:
I think the most dangerous situation we encountered was not directly related to flying but happened during a trip I made with my wife, Jan and my first-born, Jason. What happened to us on April 1, 1986, has a backstory: Poachers from Libya had been working their way south, having devastated most of the elephant population in Central African Republic. They reached the northern border of Zaire (now known as DR Congo) in 1985. Avoiding populated areas, they came in on horseback, rounding up the elephants in the savannas, indiscriminately mowing them down with machine guns. Then men on camels came in with chainsaws, cutting out the ivory and carting it back to Libya.
President Mobutu of Zaire, dispatched troops to protect the elephants, along with a small fighter jet and a Cessna 310, piloted by a Captain Madimba. The Captain made quick acquaintance with me, gleaning any information he could use about the local dirt and grass airstrips with which I was familiar. In early 1986, they achieved their goal of capturing a large band of poachers. To discourage any further theft of Zaire’s national resources, they administered what most Westerners would consider severe judgment: most of the poachers were executed but the ringleaders were castrated and had their arms cut off at the elbows and sent back to Libya. At least one of the ringleaders was a close relative of Muammar Gaddafi, ruler of Libya from 1969 until his assassination in 2011. These were the soldiers we encountered in the narrative below, who were feeling their oats due to their recent successes.
I landed at Isiro airport at 5:06 pm, having 4 passengers on board: my wife, Jan, who was 5 months pregnant, My son Jason who was 1 year old, a Zairian female student (about 16 yrs. old) and a Sudanese businessman who was going to work with his family in Isiro. We were met at the airport by Kent McElroy (WEC missionary) and Sig Grafe (AIM missionary).
I unloaded the Isiro freight and the Sudanese passenger and added one more person for my last leg to Nebobongo (Barbara Ashworth, a nurse who had assisted in Jason’s birth), having just enough time to make the 12-minute flight and land 30 minutes before sunset. I was about to climb into the pilot seat when several military men came planeside, pushing my Sudanese passenger at gunpoint. The soldiers asked if the man had arrived in my aircraft. I replied that he had, upon which they demanded to see my manifest.
We didn't use manifests in MAF and I could not ask the man his name because he did not speak English, French or Swahili, so I had not written it down. Despite his passport and visa being all in order, they made a big thing that I had failed to note my passenger’s name, accusing me of being an accomplice to a Libyan spy.
They made false claims about my passenger and me, stating that all missionaries are “Gaddafi’s” who are in Zaire only to steal its riches and corrupt the people. We tried to remain calm and keep them calm, knowing they had been drinking and had live ammunition in their rusty rifles.
Before long, it was too late for me to take-off for the flight to Nebobongo so we worked on the angle of convincing them to let the ladies and children go home with Kent McElroy. They finally agreed to this but as Kent was leaving the tarmac, he was stopped, and they shoved the Sudanese man and 4 more soldiers into the 5-passenger vehicle. They broke a hinge on the rear door as they were not all able to get completely inside. They ordered Kent to drive to the hotel where their captain lived.
The captain was not at the hotel, so they proceeded to another back street bar where they found Captain Madimba with a lady friend. The captain seemed bothered at being disturbed but didn’t seem particularly concerned that his soldiers were drunk, ordering missionaries around at gunpoint and beating the Sudanese man with their rifle stocks in front of him. However, he did tell the soldiers to return to the airport and let the pilot go free and to stop bothering us. By this time, it had been dark for an hour and was starting to rain.
At this point, Kent tried to appeal to Captain Madimba’s good sense and sober judgment not to send them back out to a dark airport with drunken armed soldiers.
The captain agreed to nothing but appeared to be following Kent’s Land Rover back to the airport. However, the men with Kent ordered him to stop in town so they could buy bread at which time Captain Madimba told them to transfer the Sudanese man to his vehicle and then drove off in another direction. We found out later that the captain took a large bribe from the Sudanese man to take him home. The soldiers bought bread with money stolen from the Zairian teenage girl and ordered Kent to proceed to the airport.
Meanwhile, back at the unlit airport, I was hopeful that the ladies and Jason were safe somewhere in town and was distraught to see them in the headlights when they disembarked from the Land Rover on the tarmac at the airport.
At that time, much confusion broke out among the military who were still threatening us and accusing us. Several of us were beaten with gun stocks and rubber batons and told we would be killed as guns were waved in our faces if we did not give them money for more beer.
Then the focus shifted to the Zairian school girl. They ordered Jan back into Kent’s vehicle and as I helped settle Jason on her lap, she had a moment to quietly tell me that, because of their earlier behavior in the car, the soldiers would try to keep the girl and certainly rape her if left alone. She had that absolutely correct.
We got into a heated discussion with the soldiers about me being responsible for my passengers safety. One of the missionaries who had stayed with me at the dark airport, Sig Grafe, happened to be from the young lady’s hometown and claimed that he would take her home in the morning.
The soldiers said the rest of us could leave but they would keep the girl and make sure she got back to her hometown. We stood our ground and said we were not leaving without her. Sig protested a bit too strongly and a rifle was shoved into his chest and the soldier shouted, “I’m going to kill this man!!”
If he had fired, he could easily have hit Jan and/or Jason who were right behind him. Another soldier hit me about the face with his baton, but they eventually accepted the fact that she was part of our group and that we were not leaving without her.
I was amazed at the young lady’s courage and composure in a situation that easily might cost her much more than just her virtue. Then suddenly, they finally let us all go freely. I think they saw Captain Madimba’s headlights on the airport road.
We returned to the WEC mission in Isiro and were grateful to be alive and safe. We had barely gotten to bed at the McElroy home when there was a knock at the door at midnight. The Isiro-based army Colonel Nefungula and retired General Yossa (both personal friends of ours) offered their apologies and had come to assure us that they were already taking steps to bring the situation under control. They explained that the soldiers at the airport were from Kisangani and not directly under their charge but that they would not allow the abuse to go unpunished.
The next morning, we were asked to accompany them to the airport to identify our abusers. About 2 weeks later, Captain Madimba, the leader of the abusive soldiers, crashed and died along with his lady friend in the Cessna 310 he was piloting. The local population thought it poetic justice and word was spread not to mess around with “their” missionaries.
About 12 days later, Jan went to bedrest with early contractions in the 26th week of her pregnancy. Ten weeks later, Greg was born in our spare bedroom, about one month early, but healthy.