/ 30 November 2000

HANI KILLERS WAIT TO HEAR FATE

A FULL bench of the Cape High Court has reserved judgment in the application for amnesty launched this week by Clive Derby-Lewis and Janusz Walus, for the assassination seven years ago of South African Communist Party leader Chris Hani. Judge president John Hlophe said judgment would be given within the next couple of weeks. Earlier, George Bizos SC, for Hani’s widow Limpho, contended that the application was “fatally flawed from the beginning”, and there was no basis to set aside the ruling of the committee to refuse them amnesty. Bizos reminded the court that the two men were convicted of the murder of Hani in April 1993, and that both had been sentenced to death, which was later commuted to life imprisonment.