Marianne Merten
This is not the first time that the National Intelligence Agency (NIA) and police intelligence services have been linked to the string of explosions – with the last two high-profile restaurant bombings, 576 blasts – that have rocked the Cape since 1996:
l In October the Mail & Guardian revealed that NIA informer Mansoor Manuel, who infiltrated the top ranks of People against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), was implicated in several pipe bomb attacks and had allegedly offered explosives to Pagad members to implicate them. He is to be the key state witness against Pagad’s Imam Moegsien Barendse and two others accused of manufacturing pipe bombs.
l In August former Pagad Gauteng co- ordinator Ayub Mungalee and former Soweto flying squad policeman George Kieser, who also claimed to be an NIA informant, implicated a senior Western Cape police officer in gun running.
l At the time the director of public prosecutions for Witwatersrand, advocate Andr de Vries, confirmed Superintendent Riaan Pool was a trained agent working for the police’s national anti-corruption unit. And Kieser subsequently led investigators to at least two caches containing an M26 hand grenade, pipe bombs, detonators, super chargers, ammunition and 126 sticks of commercial explosives hidden on the East Rand.
l After the killing of ousted Pagad founder member Farouk Jaffer in July, it emerged he had been working with police intelligence services for several years.
l In February Mungalee revealed he was a “spy” who transported gunpowder with the knowledge of the NIAbetween Johannesburg and Cape Town, despite denials by his handler.
l In late 1997, another informer in the top ranks of Pagad was exposed by Western Cape detectives after a hand grenade sting had gone wrong. Rushdien Abrahams, alias Abu Jihad, was identified as having accepted a dud hand grenade from intelligence operators.