got Beukes?
Five arrested Pagad members have laid charges of torture against their interrogators, writes Tangeni Amupadhi
Superintendent Henry Beukes, one of South Africa’s old-style policemen with a well- documented history of killing crime suspects, is in the spotlight once again.
Five People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad) members arrested in the Karoo recently have laid charges of torture against their interrogators, among them Beukes.
A preliminary investigation by the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) has revealed the suspects have bruises and injuries which may be consistent with torture.
“Let’s not say torture but assault,” says Riaz Saloojee, head of the ICD in the Western Cape. “We will be investigating how that bruising came about.” Saloojee would not divulge further details until the ICD has received medical reports.
Beukes and a few South African Police Service special investigation team members were dispatched to Cape Town to help probe a spate of bombings.
A legal representative for the five, advocate Ardiel Theunissen, says some of the detained Pagad members told him of torture methods typical of the apartheid police.
“One of the gentlemen [a suspect] mentioned that an Inspector Pretorius took a firearm, stuck it into his mouth and pulled the trigger,” says Theunissen. The officer allegedly swore and spat on the suspect.
In another classic example of torture the police officers allegedly threatened to feed the followers of Islam with pork.
Theunissen says all his clients had injuries on their hands and arms resulting from kicking and that their heads were stamped on. He says the torture of the five took place in the presence of a senior officer who did nothing to stop it.
Instead of using handcuffs, the suspects claim police tied them up with plastic strapping used for boxes. They say their wrists were fastened so tight the friction peeled their skin. Private doctors who examined them are compiling reports for the ICD.
The torture allegedly took place during the first three days following their arrest. This was after police turned down a request that the men be held at Pollsmoor prison; instead they were held at Bellville police cells. The torture only stopped when their lawyers insisted they should not be questioned without a legal representative present.
Captain Anine de Beer, the media officer for Operation Good Hope, says Pagad members always cry “torture” when arrested. She advised them to lay charges.
Theunissen complained that police investigators don’t identify themselves and uniformed officers remove their name tags while questioning suspects.
Beukes emerged this week as the leading investigator in the cases involving the Pagad suspects. A member of the special investigation team, Beukes was in the spotlight last year when his team arrested and shot dead a handcuffed Josiah “Fingers” Rabotapi.
The ICD has since pronounced that Rabotapi was shot from behind. Beukes has been the subject of at least three killings of suspects in his 20-year career.
In 1990 an inquest court found him guilty of throttling a suspect to death. Beukes claimed the handcuffed Bongani Maphumulo drowned in a scuffle in a swimming pool at the Soweto murder and robbery unit’s office. The magistrate described Beukes’s side of the story as “pure fantasy”.
Four years later Beukes admitted to the wrongful killing of another suspect, Fana Cindi, whom he shot five times in the back.