John Grobler
In what amounts to an inquest into an inquest, the second judicial investigation into the Anton Lubowski assassination opens on Monday in the Windhoek High Court with what appears to be very little new evidence, a lack of political will to solve the murder and a vote of no confidence from the Lubowski family.
The inquest is expected to delve more into Lubowski’s past and, in particular, examine some of the odder house guests at the Lubowski’s home in a plush Windhoek suburb.
The family of the South West African People’s Organisation (Swapo) activist and human rights advocate — gunned down on September 12 1989 — angrily rejected the second inquest as another attempt at obfuscation of the facts already determined by the first inquest, held in 1994.
“So far the findings of the first inquest have been ignored,” The Namibian newspaper quoted Gabrielle Lubowski, mother of Lubowski’s two teenage children, as saying. “We don’t want another long inquest, we want the men who were implicated in plotting his murder to be on trial.”
The first inquest named Irish self- confessed mercenary Donald Acheson and Civil Co-operation Bureau members Ferdi Barnard, Leon (“Chappies”) Maree, Staal Burger, Calla Botha, Abraham (“Slang”) van Zyl, Joe Verster, Wouter Basson and Johan Niemoller, as well as local policeman Inspector Terrie Terblanche and Charles Wildschut/Neelse as being involved in the planning — if not the act — of assassinating Lubowski.
On August 7 1989 Business Day featured an article detailing how Bill Ullman, a CIA agent and front-man for New York diamond dealer Maurice Tempelsman, had made an appearance on the political scene.
Testimony will be given that Ullman spent several weeks in Lubowski’s house in early 1989, ostensibly to discuss future mining and energy investment with the Swapo leadership. Ullman has disappeared into thin air.
To subpoena Tempelsman will be difficult: a member of the highly influential Washington-based National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, he is a personal friend of Namibian President Sam Nujoma.
To make him testify would require serious clout — and it is doubtful whether the government would want to risk embarrassment on this level.