Apartheid-Era Death Squad Leader Convicted in S. African Murders

A former police officer who headed apartheid’s most notorious death squad--a state-sanctioned unit that carried out grisly bombings, assassinations and other atrocities--was convicted Monday on five counts of murder.

Former police Col. Eugene de Kock, a key figure in the “dirty war” waged by the white minority regime against black liberation forces, is the first senior security officer to be convicted of apartheid-related offenses since the nation’s first all-race elections in April 1994.

Magnus Malan, an apartheid-era defense minister, and 10 other former top military and intelligence officials are on trial in a separate murder case in Durban. The group is charged with masterminding a hit-squad massacre of 13 people, mostly women and children, nine years ago.

De Kock, known to his former colleagues as “Prime Evil,” still faces verdicts on 116 other charges, including three other murders, kidnapping, assault, illegal weapons possession and dozens of counts of fraud.

Now 48, the burly, bespectacled officer headed the Vlakplaas police anti-insurgency squad--known as the C-10 unit--from a placid farm west of Pretoria for a decade until the group was ordered disbanded in 1993.

Witnesses and evidence implicated De Kock’s team in a series of covert crimes, including bombing, poisoning, torturing and burning to death dozens of anti-apartheid activists here and abroad. The 18-month trial offered a litany of official cover-ups, corruption and murder, allegedly by some of the most senior police officers.

Several of De Kock’s closest former friends and colleagues provided the most damning evidence against him, testifying in return for immunity.

“You become cold and distance yourself and ignore your conscience,” testified Dougie Holtzhausen, a former Vlakplaas operative. “But your ghosts come out to haunt you in your nightmares.”

De Kock’s specialty was using torture, blackmail and other means to persuade captured black guerrillas from the African National Congress to work, instead, for him.

In some cases, the unit’s members turned on each other.

Witnesses testified that De Kock and his men savagely beat a black police officer in their unit and then suffocated him with an inner tube, a practice they called “tubing.” Another favored practice for the group was grilling sausages and drinking beer while blowing up the bodies of victims with explosives.

The unit’s most infamous action was sending a booby-trapped tape cassette player to Dirk Coetzee, who preceded De Kock as commander of Vlakplaas but later went public about its illegal operations. Coetzee refused to accept the mailed package, but his lawyer was killed when it was delivered to him.

A previous investigation of “Third Force” activities--as covert, state-sponsored violence was termed--alleged that De Kock and his operatives had: trained and armed Zulu militias in workers’ hostels; organized massacres on commuter trains; and funneled weapons to the Zulu-based Inkatha Freedom Party, the chief rival of the now-ruling ANC.

De Kock’s conviction Monday came as no surprise because his lawyers had unexpectedly conceded at the end of his marathon trial that the state case had proven he was guilty of six murder charges, kidnapping, assault and 28 fraud charges. They called no witnesses in his defense.

Judge Willem van der Merwe finished reading only the first five charges in the Pretoria Supreme Court on Monday before stopping for the day. Sentencing has not been scheduled.

De Kock did not take the stand during the long trial. But he is expected to testify next month in order to mitigate his sentence. Prosecutors hope he will say which police generals, or even which former Cabinet members, gave him his orders. “We think he’s going to spill the beans,” one prosecutor said.

South Africa has abolished the death penalty, so De Kock could face life imprisonment. He has applied for a pardon from the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is investigating apartheid-era crimes. But he would have to confess fully before his plea could be considered.

Even then, prosecutors constructed their case to paint him as a thief who acted out of greed, not just for political reasons. In any case, the truth commission’s mandate specifically excludes particularly heinous crimes.

Until his arrest in late 1994, De Kock led a life out of a John Le Carre novel. He carried passports in eight names, plus credit cards and other documents in false names. Although his salary was about $1,000 a month, he stashed vast sums in British, Swiss and Portuguese bank accounts.

Much of the money was stolen, prosecutors say. De Kock allegedly paid himself under the guise of being a secret informant, illegally sold truckloads of military weapons, filed false insurance claims after selling government vehicles and claimed rewards for supposedly solving crimes that had never happened.

Monday’s convictions were for the deaths of five unarmed blacks who were ambushed by De Kock’s squad outside Nelspruit in the eastern part of the country in March 1992.

Witnesses said assault rifles and grenades were planted after the ambush and a vehicle was set afire to destroy incriminating evidence.

De Kock told his men the five were bank robbers who were acting on instructions of Winnie Mandela. She was then the wife of Nelson Mandela, who is now the country’s president. But the vehicle belonged to a friend of De Kock’s who wanted it destroyed so he could claim insurance, witnesses said.