S. Africa Probe of Biko Death Opens Today
A new inquiry into the 1977 death in police custody of South African black leader Steve Biko opens in the capital of Pretoria today.
A South African court has ordered the country’s medical watchdog group to hold a disciplinary inquiry into whether two district physicians, Ivor Lang and Benjamin Tucker, acted improperly in treating Biko, the popular, 30-year-old leader of the black consciousness movement. His death prompted an international outcry.
The Pretoria Supreme Court ruled earlier this year that there was prima facie evidence of misconduct.
According to testimony at an inquest after Biko’s death, he had been chained hand and foot to a radiator for most of two days in a security police office, then driven for hundreds of miles in the back of a van from Port Elizabeth to Pretoria, where he died of head injuries.
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