South African all-rounder Albie Morkel recently shared his hard experiences when he was stuck in a jail in Mozambique on a charge of weapons smuggling.
Albie Morkel is the elder brother of former South African pacer Morne Morkel. Apart from being a South African all-rounder, Albie also had a successful career in Indian Premier League (IPL).
In last July, Albie and his friends went for a fishing trip on the lower Zambezi River. On his return, he asked the gardener to clean the car who found some ammunition in the car. Not knowing what to do with that, he put that inside one of Albie Morkel’s cricket bag.
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Later, on his return home, those ammunitions were found in his bag and it became worse due to the language barrier.
In the TV show named The Dan Nicholl Show, Albie recently described that incident by saying, “It had been a fantastic trip and I was at the airport on my way back when the airport security found some ammunition in my bag that I didn’t know about. With the language barrier, things escalated very quickly into a big mess. I told the other guys in our party to go ahead and board and I’ll just sort this problem out and catch the later flight.
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“But two hours later I was in Tete provincial prison for the two most horrific days of my life. I was held for the serious criminal charge of weapons smuggling and nobody at the court was willing to help me before it closed at 3pm, so I was taken to jail.
“The situation got a bit ugly when the guy helping me jostled one of the policemen a bit and out came the AK-47s. I was pushed into a car and next thing I knew I was at the gates of the prison.”
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Albie added that he was fortunate to meet with two guys in jail who helped him with some crucial advice. Later, he managed to get released with the help of his friends.
Albie said, “Luckily, I met a couple of guys in jail. Andrew was a computer tech guy from Malawi, who had been inside for six months because he couldn’t show his papers after they had had a few drinks in the pub, and the other guy had been there for 11 months after being arrested for selling cellphone batteries that the police thought he had stolen.
“They told me who I should stay away from and that the shade belonged to the main okes. Fortunately, I was allowed to sleep alone in the office at night and, five minutes before the jail closed on Friday afternoon for the weekend, my friends on the outside managed to get me out.”
