By Zweli Martin Dlamini

MBABANE:Arnold Pienaar,the founder of Bastion Security, a company that provides mercenary services to King Mswati has come-out to confirm that they have a list of terrorists to be killed.

Speaking to the Times of London, the Afrikaner ‘hitman’ who served in the South African army during apartheid and worked in Iraq,confirmed that his company signed a security agreement with the King last year but denied any involvement in the killing of human rights lawyer Thulani Maseko.

“We do training, it is nonsense that we are a hit squad or mercenaries,” he told The Times. 

After working in Swaziland for a number of years defending commercial forests from arson attacks, Pienaar said he had struck up a relationship with the King and offered to help with the worsening security.

“I could see that the security forces were totally untrained for the job of dealing with terrorists,” he said.

 “The narrative that people are being jailed for peaceful protests is crap.They are terrorists and choose violence, they are not freedom fighters.”

The Times of London further reported that rather than being the extravagant tyrant as often depicted, Pienaar considered the King

“to be far too soft on what has been brewing for a very long time”.

The alleged King’s hitman blamed Maseko’s death on “an inside job”, a power struggle within the movement. 

“I have worked all over Africa, that’s how it works here.There is always in-fighting.There was no reason to kill him, he was not on our list of terrorists,” he said, adding that records put all his men and vehicles nowhere near the murder scene in Luhleko.

It could not be ascertained how the alleged mercenaries got to know that Maseko was allegedly killed in the midst of infighting within the movement as Government claimed police were investigating.