OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Tuesday 9.00PM.
TEN former security policemen, including former commissioner General Johann Coetzee and ex-Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock, are seeking amnesty for a series of attacks against anti-apartheid activists in the 1980s.
The applications to the Truth and Reconciliation amnesty committee are for offences such as the murder of Ruth First, wife of late SA Communist Party leader Joe Slovo, the killing of Jeanette Schoon and her daughter Katryn in Angola, and the bombing of African National Congress offices in London amd Lusaka.
Coetzee is one of eight policemen seeking amnesty for the London bombing in 1982. The other applicants are apartheid “super-spy” Craig Williamson, Lieutenant James B Taylor, intelligence operative John Louis McPherson, explosives expert Roger HL Raven, Lieutenant John S Adam, the former head of technical services Wybrand AL du Toit, and De Kock.
Williamson and Raven are also seeking amnesty for the parcel bomb murder of First and the attempted murder of Slovo in Maputo, Mozambique in 1982. Williamson, Raven and Isak Daniel Bosch are seeking amnesty for the murder of Schoon and her daughter in 1984. Former Brigadier Willem Schoon is seeking amnesty for the attempted murder of Schoon’s husband, Marius, in Botswana in 1981.
McPherson is also applying for amnesty for the bombing of ANC offices in Lusaka in 1985.
The committee will start hearing the applications at the Idasa centre in Pretoria on September 6.