Susan Purn
The police have opened a criminal docket to investigate who secretly taped the visits to convicted killer Janusz Walus by his lawyers in prison in 1993.
Ten cassettes, two of which are of legal visits, have been handed to the police. The recordings were made during the time Walus was awaiting trial for the killing of South African Communist Party secretary general, Chris Hani.
Walus and Clive Derby-Lewis, who have both received the death sentence for the killing, are currently awaiting the outcome of their amnesty applications.
Members of the legal fraternity have called the existence of the tapes a gross violation of privileged information. Dawie de Villiers, professor of evidence and criminal law at the Rand Afrikaans University, said he was shocked at the existence of the tapes and warned that the bugging of legal visits can lead to the original findings in a court case being reconsidered.
Advocate Rudolph Jansen of Lawyers for Human Rights said it made a mockery of the legal profession and that they would take the matter up with the police and the Department of Correctional Services.
The investigation now being conducted follows months of apparent neglect of the charges that were laid after a reference to the tapes was found by Derby-Lewis’s wife, Gaye.
The list of recordings was part of police records of the Hani murder case. Heated correspondence between the police’s head of information security, Director Andr Roos, and Gaye Derby-Lewis resulted in the case being brought to the attention of Minister of Safety and Security Sydney Mufamadi, Only then was a criminal docket opened.
Investigating officer Captain Gerhard Nel, of the Gauteng serious violent crime unit, has taken possession of the cassettes after Gaye Derby-Lewis demanded them from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The main charge being investigated falls under Section 2(1)(b) of Act 127 of 1992, which covers the monitoring and interception of communication.
No one now wants to take responsibility for recording the discussions between Walus and his legal representatives, Henri Stopforth and Pieter Sieberhagen. But it seems that the truth commission had been aware of the recordings for 18 months – in June 1997 the commission’s deputy national director of investigations signed for receiving the 10 audio and 12 video recordings from the police.
The audio cassettes consist of 20 hours of conversation recorded between April 21 and May 4 1993. Two members of the former security branch, Andr Bester and Nick Deetlefs, were involved in the interrogation of Walus and Derby-Lewis. In a recent letter to Roos, Walus named Deetlefs as being responsible for the tapes. During the Hani case, Deetlefs was accused by Walus and Derby-Lewis’s representatives of extracting confessions by unlawful means.
In the early 1980s, Deetlefs was named in various claims for damages brought against police. He has been accused more than once of assault and torture. Years ago he was also charged with assault by Barbara Hogan, now an African National Congress MP. It is not clear if he has applied for amnesty.
In a document handed to the truth commission’s amnesty committee, Deetlefs states that he visited Walus at the Pretoria Maximum Prison for interrogation and that a Lieutenant Tom Muller had advised him that Stopforth was going to visit Walus.
In documents before court in a recent separate case, the same Muller, now a warder with the Witbank Correctional Service, was mentioned as being responsible for illegal phone tapping at Pretoria Maximum Prison.
Correctional services representative Barrie Eksteen says an internal investigation has failed to find any evidence of illegal tapping or bugging at the prison. He said the department would assist the criminal investigation in all possible ways.
Police say it is not clear how the tapes were made, but the Mail & Guardian is in possession of information that at least one visitor’s cubicle at the prison was known to be bugged at the time. The cubicle was also used by Eugene de Kock and his legal representative.