----- Original Message ----- From: Rick Rozoff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Friday, May 05, 2000 8:26 AM Subject: [STOPNATO] Apartheid Officer Killed Hundreds of Prisoners STOP NATO: NO PASARAN! - HTTP://WWW.STOPNATO.COM http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,217433,00.html The Guardian (UK) Apartheid officer killed hundreds of prisoners Andrew Selsky in Pretoria Friday May 5, 2000 The Guardian A former South African special forces officer yesterday described killing hundreds of black guerrillas and tossing their corpses from an aircraft into the Atlantic ocean, shedding light on one of the worst horrors committed by the apartheid regime. Sketchy reports had surfaced earlier of the murder of some 200 guerrillas who fought against South Africa's occupation of neighbouring Namibia, known as South West Africa until it won independence in 1990. Johan Theron's testimony crystalised the events of two decades ago. Leaning forward in the witness stand in the Pretoria high court, Mr Theron told in a mild voice of flinging the corpses of his victims from a plane 3,700 metres (12,000ft) above the Atlantic and watching them plummet to the sea. "The people had to be dead before I threw them into the sea," explained Mr Theron, a former special forces lieutenant colonel, to eliminate any chance that they would survive to implicate him. Most were killed by an overdose of muscle relaxants supplied by Dr Wouter Basson, who ran apartheid South Africa's chemical and biological weapons programme, according to Mr Theron, who is appearing as a prosecution witness in Dr Basson's murder, conspiracy and fraud trial. Mr Theron hopes to secure immunity from prosecution by testifying. He said he did not confess his crimes to the truth and reconciliation commission - which can grant amnesty - because he did not want to be "humiliated". Mr Theron said that he and the commander of apartheid's special forces at the time, General Fritz Loots, had decided there were too many South West African People's Organisation guerrillas in prison camps and that they posed a "security risk". The two decided to kill the PoWs, Mr Theron said. He conducted an aerial surveillance of the Atlantic coast off Namibia to see where best to dump the bodies without them being washed to shore, and felt that 100 miles offshore was suitable. South African paramilitary police then began delivering prisoners to him for execution in 1979, he said. The first killing did not go as planned, he said on Wednesday. He fired a dart supposedly loaded with an overdose of tranquiliser to kill a prisoner, but the man did not go down. "The prisoner started struggling with me. I put a plastic cuff around his neck and strangled him," he said. "I thought he would die quickly, but it took 15 minutes of kicking and wetting himself before he died. It was very traumatic." After trying to perfect the executions with muscle relaxants that caused the victims to suffocate, Mr Theron said he was not satisfied because they were dying in agony. So future victims were given anaesthesia in cans of soft drink or beer before being injected. "I cannot remember how many we killed, but there must have been hundreds," he told the court. AP __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Send instant messages & get email alerts with Yahoo! Messenger. http://im.yahoo.com/ ______________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe, write to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Advertisement: What kind of shoes do you want? Check out Zappos.com, the World's Largest Shoe Store, and get a FREE $10 GIFT CERTIFICATE. FREE shipping and no sales tax on all U.S. orders! http://www.listbot.com/links/zappos
