/ 5 March 1999

WILLIAMSON AMNESTY HEARING ENDS

THE amnesty hearing for notorious apartheid-era police officer and “superspy” Craig Williamson concluded in Pretoria on Thursday. Williamson applied to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for amnesty for letter bombs which killed Ruth First, the wife of prominent communist and housing minister Joe Slovo, in Maputo in 1982 and activist Jeanette Schoon and her daughter, Katryn (6), in Angola in 1984. He and other senior police officers, including former police commissioner Johan Coetzee, are also seeking amnesty for the 1982 bombing of the African National Congress headquarters in London.