Briton
Angella Johnson
The attorney general’s office in Pretoria is seeking the extradition from the United Kingdom of a Briton charged with murdering two black men at a neo-Nazi training camp near Heidelberg.
Tyrone Chadwick, who jumped bail last year and is believed to be living in the UK, was expected to stand trial later this month. The case will be postponed until extradition has been completed.
It has been alleged that Chadwick ran a training camp for the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging (AWB), training members of Mangosuthu Buthelezi’s Inkatha Freedom Party to carry out raids on African National Congress supporters. Evidence of paramilitary training facilities were discovered on the property.
Chadwick (37), from Lichfield, in the English county of Staffordshire, was granted bail of R25 000 in March last year after the decomposed bodies of two black men were found in a shallow grave on a farm near Heidelberg, south of Johannesburg.
Although his British passport was handed to police as part of the bail conditions, police believe Chadwick managed to skip the country by posing as a tourist.
Johanni Barnardt, an advocate in the attorney general’s office, said steps were being taken with the co-operation of the British police to locate and arrest him.
Alleged AWB member Marthinus Venter, jointly charged with the same murders, was also granted bail of R5 000. Both men have denied the charges.
Chadwick, who describes himself as a “commercial soldier”, is understood to have claimed that he is a member of the “third force”.
The unidentified black men, shot at point-blank range, were members of the IFP. Police say Chadwick claimed to have trained IFP members as hit-squad assassins.
One of the bodies was said to have been that of a teenager who had been killed for firing too few rounds during a raid. Inkatha has denied any involvement in training at the farm.
After the training camp was closed in December 1993, Chadwick claimed that he provided black volunteers and white mercenaries camouflaged in black make-up for attacks arranged by a fanatical right-wing associate.
Chadwick is said to have sent his Inkatha charges out on raiding parties to “ANC settlements” with instructions to come back with a prisoner.