CNN - Senior police implicate P.W. Botha in apartheid-era assassinations - Oct. 21, 1996

October 21, 1996
Web posted at: 5:45 p.m. EDT (2145 GMT)

From Bureau Chief Mike Hanna

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (CNN) -- Five senior South African police officers seeking amnesty before the nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission have blamed a former South African president Monday for acts they committed during the apartheid era.

In written statements, the officers admitted responsibility for the murders of more than 40 people. They want to be pardoned in return for demonstrating their acts were not the work of rogue individuals but part of a state-sanctioned program of assassination and intimidation.

Even today, journalists struggle to put faces to the names of those who have admitted guilt. Appearing on behalf of the men, former police commissioner Gen. Johan van der Merwe said Monday the men were following orders from their superiors and from members of the South African government.

Van der Merwe cited the 1988 bombing of a Johannesburg building as an example. "During 1988, I received an instruction from Mr. Adriaan Vlok, then Minister of Law and Order, to the effect that the building known as Khotso House was to be damaged by explosives to such an extent that it could no longer be utilized," van der Merwe testified before the commission.

At the time of the bombing, the Khotso House housed a number of known anti-apartheid organizations. Nobody was killed in the bombing, but 23 people were injured.

Until now, the government of the time and its security forces had consistently denied any complicity in the attack. Van der Merwe testified that Vlok told him, "this instruction had come from President P.W. Botha personally."

The 40 murders the officers confessed to included the deaths of anti-apartheid activists Fabian and Florence Ribiero, who were gunned down in 1986. Until now, their assassins were unknown.

In 1989, F. W. de Klerk succeeded P.W. Botha as president, and as leader of the ruling National Party. De Klerk has repeatedly claimed he had no knowledge of illegal actions by the security forces, a claim the five officers seeking amnesty said in a statement they seriously doubt.

"We call upon the previous government, and our superiors, to explain certain orders given to us, about which we shall testify, and to admit to authorizing actions outside the normal processes of the law, such as are demonstrated by the facts of our deeds and the authorizations thereof," said their attorney, Willem Brits.

South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to probe political crimes that occurred between 1960 and 1993.

Already it has heard testimony from a former police official who implicated the South African government in Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme's 1986 assassination. Palme was an outspoken critic of apartheid. Craig Williamson, the security police spy blamed for the assassination, emphatically denied Monday that he had anything to do with Palme's assassination, and didn't know who was involved.

Yet even at this early stage it appears that even more damning evidence will surface before the amnesty committee, implicating the once all-powerful security forces and their political masters in crimes against humanity. The officers' testimony Monday was all the more convincing, because it comes from those who were once prepared to kill in order that the truth be kept hidden.

Reuters contributed to this report.