OWN CORRESPONDENT, Johannesburg | Friday 9.15am.
A RETIRED member of South African Airways’s senior management has admitted that the carrier regularly carried highly explosive substances as well as weapons aboard passenger flights in the 1980s.
The Beeld reports that Brian Watkins, a retired senior route manager at SAA, told the paper: “We murdered the people aboard the Helderberg.”
The ill-fated Helderberg plunged into the sea just of Mauritius in 1987, killing all 159 aboard.
Watkins claims he received death threats just before the commission of inquiry into the air crash, led by Judge Cecil Margo. He said he was warned not to reveal what he knows.
Watkins alleges that dangerous cargo such as weapons, ammunition and explosives were transported not only on the Taiwan/Johannesburg route, but also the London, Frankfurt and Lisbon routes. He said it was mostly billed as agricultural equipment.
Watkins said the captain of the ill-fated Helderberg, Dawie Uys, appeared visibly tense a couple of days before the flight and had his will and testament reviewed.
“I do not want to go to the grave with my secrets,” Watkins said.