Hassanali Remembered!!
Hassanali, first person to disappear after the June 5 Coup d’Etat
On the 13/8/77 my dad Hassan left his house at La Louise to go to St Louis around 6.30 as my recollection serves me. The journey would have only taken around 15minutes in them days and 39 years later he still yet to reach his destination.
This day was the darkest day of our life. His car that he was driving was found with the door open at St Louis on the road around the bend above the Chinese shops on the way to Beau Vallon.
Albert Rene henchmen took his life.
My dad is a true hero in my eyes of the Seychelles.
He was a business man who would always help others and always had time for everyone.
He loved his country.
39 years to the day has passed and we have grown from boys to men always wondering what has happened to him?
My mum Carlette Ball has endured but has always found the strength to make sure we wanted for nothing.
I thank god for sending a man who took care of us by the name of Peter Ball who raised us up as his own.
Today I share a little bit of the Seychelles darkest past under the brutal regime of France Albert Rene.
From FB post by Jafar Tall
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HASSANALI REMEMBERED!!
Hassanali, first person to disappear after the June 5 Coup d’Etat
In a few weeks’ time, it will be 31 years since the first mysterious disappearance after the June 5 Coup.
The disappearance and presumed killing of Victoria businessman Hassan Ibrahim, better known locally as Hassanali, swept the islands with a fresh wave of concern and fear.
Weeks before the coup, there had been the disappearance of Gilbert Morgan, a well-known electrical contractor, married to Sylvia Labonte, a former beauty queen. Morgan had been having some drinks at the Reef Hotel when he was apparently called outside on some pretext by unidentified persons and never seen again. His car was still in the Reef Hotel parking the next day. But he has not been seen since. Later on, many people linked it to the coup, as it was believed he had knowledge of some things and had started talking a bit.
In Hassanali’s case, his empty car was found abandoned between the town centre and St Louis, pointing in the direction of Beau Vallon. The car, a Toyota Saloon did not have lights on, the radio was playing at the time, a pair of slippers was found on the road and an item of ammunition was found in front of the car.
The last person to speak to Hassanli was his girlfriend, Carlette Tall, the woman he lived with at La Louise and the mother of his three children.
She said: We received a phone call that evening from my sister asking us if she could borrow the car to go out. I asked Hassan whether he would like to drive the car to her place so that she would drop him back home on her way to where she was going that evening. “He left home at exactly 7 pm.”
Carlette Tall said it was her sister who rang her later to say that Hassan’s car had been seen on the road and Hassan was missing. Apparently she waited for him and when he did not arrive she apparently got a friend to take her to where she was going. It was on her way down that she saw the empty car.
“That’s the last time I’ve heard about him. I only wish I had gone with him that night,” said Carlette.
Carlette Tall’s sister, Antonia Wilkinson said she was walking home to St Louis from the town centre that night of August 1977 when she noticed Hassan’s car pass her. She noticed he was on his own.
“A little further up, I saw two cars in front of him and Hassan was trying to overtake them. Shortly afterwards, it started to rain and I got a bus. When I was going up St Louis on the bus, I noticed the empty car on the road, but it did not occur to me that it could be Hassan’s car. I found out later that it was.”
Police offered a R 50,000 reward for information on the whereabouts of Hassanali, a vocal critic of the new regime. But like, Morgan some months earlier, he had vanished, never to be seen again. The legacy of the coup d’etat and the one party era, not something to be proud of SPPF - This is why we need a period of national reconciliation to forgive and forget or at least to put closure on the outstanding issues of brutalities and violence against the people and to finally move on in harmony as one nation, one people under one flag. What do you say SPPF?
Source: Le Nouveau Seychelles Weekly July 4, 2008