Former judge Joos Hefer has decided to subpoena the country’s intelligence agencies for information, his commission announced on Wednesday.
Commission secretary Advocate John Bacon said the heads of the various agencies will be summonsed to testify before the commission.
The subpoenas will also force them to submit all relevant documents in their possession to aid the commission’s investigation.
The agencies involved are the intelligence units of the departments of defence and of safety and security, as well as the National Intelligence Agency and the South African Security Service.
Hefer’s decision follows a hardline stance taken last week by the intelligence community in response to the commission’s request for documentary evidence.
The commmission needs intelligence documents to either prove or disprove allegations that National Director of Public Prosecutions Bulelani Ngcuka was an apartheid spy.
Last Friday, Advocate George Bizos, SC, on behalf of the intelligence community, told the commission it was not entitled to blanket permission to disclose protected information.
Bizos instructed the commission and its witnesses to follow a bureaucratic procedure to apply for the agencies’ permission to disclose certain information.
The commission must justify the need for disclosure in these applications, Bizos argued.
Lawyers for the commission and its accused disputed Bizos’s submission, maintaining that Hefer was entitled to simply summonse the spymasters to cooperate.
While testifying before the commission, they had the right to object to questions put to them, commission evidence leader Advocate Kessie Naidu, SC, said.
On Tuesday, the Freedom of Expression Institute and the South African History Archive also disputed Bizos’s legal arguments. — Sapa
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