Former Civil Cooperation Bureau operative and convicted apartheid assassin Ferdie Barnard is applying for a presidential pardon, the Daily Dispatch reported this week. The amnesty window for people applying for a presidential pardon for alleged political offences began last week and ends on April 15.
Former Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) operative and convicted apartheid assassin Ferdie Barnard is applying for a presidential pardon, the Daily Dispatch reported this week.
The amnesty window for people applying for a presidential pardon for alleged political offences began last week and ends on April 15.
A multiparty reference group will consider applications for pardons and will make recommendations to President Thabo Mbeki.
According to the Daily Dispatch, Barnard was convicted in 1998 of, among other crimes, murdering anti-apartheid activist David Webster and attempting to murder former minister of justice and constitutional development Dullah Omar.
He has been in prison for 10 years already and has married while serving his sentence.
Barnard's advocate, Faan Coetzee, told the newspaper that his client had applied for a presidential pardon in 2002.
He will now file supplementary papers to Mbeki before the end of the week.
Under the apartheid government, the CCB was a covert, special-forces organisation whose objectives were to eliminate anti-apartheid activists and destroy African National Congress facilities both inside and outside South Africa," the newspaper said. — Sapa