Stefaans BrUmmer
TRANSVAAL Attorney General Jan D’Oliveira will go ahead with plans to charge some of the 22 policemen who approached the Truth and Reconciliation Commission this week, saying their offer to co- operate with the truth body may “well be” an attempt to pre-empt prosecution.
D’Oliveira confirmed there was a “significant overlap” between the 20 crimes the group was contemplating confessing and crimes his office was investigating, or which had surfaced during his office’s prosecution of former Vlakplaas hit-squad commander Eugene de Kock.
D’Oliveira, who directs a special investigation team into apartheid security force crimes, agreed it was “indeed possible the intended step may be an attempt to pre-empt prosecution”, but said: “As far as I am concerned, the law should run its course.”
It emerged this week that the group of 22 former and serving policemen — so far unidentified, but including a brigadier and “several colonels and majors” — had written to the commission putting out feelers about asking for amnesty for 20 crimes in the 1980s and early 1990s.
The letter, compiled by lawyer Johan Wagener, who recently resigned as state attorney, reportedly specifies crimes including the bombing of Khotso House in Johannesburg and other bombings, the murder of the “Pebco three”, cross-border raids, and the murders of Jeffrey Sibiya Bophu, Brian Nqulunga, Beki Mlangeni and Jackson Maake. Wagener delivered a copy to D’Oliveira last Friday.
Former police commissioner Johann van der Merwe this week confirmed he and other ex-generals supported the approach and would accept collective responsibility where applicable. He said the generals would also consider individual amnesty applications “if information from [one of Wagener’s] clients implicates them”.
President Nelson Mandela this week hailed the group’s approach to the truth commission, and it has been widely described as the commission’s first major breakthrough in its attempts to lure former security force operatives to confess sins of the past.
But a senior Justice Department official said this week it seemed amnesty was only being sought for crimes where security operatives knew they were likely to be caught: “These guys saw their impending arrests and tried to forestall it. It is a cheap shot … But they are underestimating the attorney general’s office.”
He pointed out that changes had been made to truth commission legislation late last year, at D’Oliveira’s initiative, to regulate the relationship between the attorney general and the commission. As a result, the commission cannot take on cases already under investigation unless the attorney general agrees.
The official said D’Oliveira “has said he is not going to hand over these files”, and prosecutions on the more important cases would go ahead. Once perpetrators had been found guilty, they would still be free to approach the commission for amnesty.
What remains unclear is how the 22 knew many of them were under investigation. The official said they could have “deduced” this from the actions of the investigating team, but said it could also have been a “mole” or “careless talk” by a member of the attorney general’s office.