Former security policeman Gideon Nieuwoudt has not made a full disclosure regarding his role in the 1989 Motherwell car bombing incident, advocate Kessie Naidu told an amnesty hearing in the Port Elizabeth High Court on Tuesday.
South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) news reported Naidu, who represented the victims’ families, as saying Nieuwoudt came with ”a lot of baggage and in his bag of tricks was lots of lies”.
Naidu asked the committee to take this into account when evaluating evidence.
However advocate Jaap Cilliers, representing Nieuwoudt, earlier told the committee that shortcomings in Nieuwoudt’s evidence needed to be overlooked due to the amount of time that had passed since the incident.
He said Nieuwoudt had acted in the interest of national security when he planned and carried out the blast.
Two apartheid era colleagues of Nieuwoudt’s — Wahl du Toit and Marthinus Ras — were also applying for amnesty.
The SABC reported that Cilliers mentioned other cases where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had granted amnesty to apartheid operatives who had killed people threatening to expose them.
On Monday, Cilliers argued that Nieuwoudt had fully disclosed his role in the bombing. Nieuwoudt’s actions were politically motivated.
He said Nieuwoudt, Du Toit and Ras should therefore be granted amnesty in the interests of reconciliation.
The closing arguments in re-application for amnesty started on Monday, after a delay of almost two months.
Nieuwoudt, Du Toit and Ras face jail sentences of 20, 15, and 10 years respectively if amnesty is not granted for their killing of three policemen and an ”askari” (turned liberation fighter) in Motherwell on December 14, 1989.
Nieuwoudt says the policemen were killed because they had threatened to defect to the African National Congress.
However, former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock testified earlier that they were killed because they ”knew too much” about the earlier murder of anti-apartheid activist Matthew Goniwe.
On Monday, Cilliers said De Kock could not support his client’s evidence because De Kock had not been in Port Elizabeth at the time of the bombing. – Sapa