CAPE TOWN DEATH-SQUAD INQUIRY OPENS

• Document Type: FOIA
• Collection: FOIA Collection
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): 06537689
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: U
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: February 24, 2023
• Document Release Date: February 24, 2023
• Case Number: F-2014-00485
• Publication Date: March 6, 1990

Approved for Release: 2017/07/13 C06537689
Cape Town Death-Squad
Inquiry Opens
By JOHN F. BURNS
Special co The New York Times
CAPE TOWN, March 5 � A secret
South African military unit suspected
of killing opponents of apartheid
; planned at one time to replace the
heart pills of Nelson Mandela's lawyer
with tablets designed to induce a heart
attack, a judicial inquiry was told to-
day.
In a day of bizarre testimony, the in-
quiry, which opened today, was told
that the military unit, known as the
Civil Cooperation Bureau, also once
planned to send a baboon fetus to Arch-
bishop Desmond M. Tutu, the 58-year-
old Nobel Peace Prize winner and An-
glican primate of southern Africa. Evi-
dence before the inquiry showed that
the plan was code-named Operation
Apie. Apie is the Afrikaans word for
ape.
Another bureau plan was said to
have involved "tampering" with the
; luggage of the Rev. Frank Chikane,
!general secretary of the South African
I Council of Churches, an anti-apartheid
umbrella group. The extent of the re-
ported tampering was not specified.
No Details Given
The chief lawyer for the inquiry,
Timothy McNally, who is Attorney
General of the Orange Free State, said
the odd assortment of schemes was re-
vealed in confessions made to police in-
vestigators. The confessions were re-
portedly made by former officers ar-
rested on suspicion of killings linked to
the Civil Cooperation Bureau. No de-
tails of the plans were given, but from
the references to them made by Mr.
McNally it appeared that none of the
proposals were carried out.
�Under questioning by Mr. McNally,
Lieut. Gen. Rudol fi Badenhorst head
p mi Italy trite lence or e u
African Defense Force, said an inter-
nal military inquiry had established
mat tne oureau was responsible for two
bomb blasts in recent years. one of
them at an early-learning center in
Athlone, a mixed-race area outside
ape own, e o er at a store In
"Pretoria, the administrative capital,
operated by a man identified only as
Marius. Apparently, there were no
deaths in either blast.
The disclosures before the inquiry,
coming after weeks of newspaper re-
ports about the Civil Cooperation Bu-
reau, appeared_ likely to intensify _ the_
problems that the affair has created
for President F. W. de Klerk. Mr. de
Klerk said last week that he had not
known of the bureau's existence until
he was informed of it by the Defense
Minister, Magnus A. Malan, in Janu-
ary.
Tonight, Mr. Malan, a retired general
who has rejected demands for his
' resignation in the scandal, issued a
statement saying he had also learned
of the bureau's existence only recently,
when General Badenhorst informed
him of it in "late November."
Chief of Bureau Arrested
The day's testimony, at a church
auditorium in Pretoria, also revealed
that Col. Joe Verster, identified as the
head of the Civil Cooperation Bureau,
was arrested Friday by police investi-
gators looking into the deaths of Anton
Lubowski and David Webster, two anti-
apartheid activists who were shot to
death last year. Mr. Lubowski was
killed in Windhoek, the capital of
Namibia, and Mr. Webster in Johan-
nesburg. Colonel Verster is being held
under a section of the Internal Security
Act that has generally been used to de-
tain anti-apartheid activists.
The arrest of Colonel Verster, in a
raid that required police officers to
scale a nine-foot wall at the colonel's
Pretoria home, apparently took place
without the knowledge or co-operation
of the defense force, which is said to
have been feuding with the police since
the existence of the Civil Cooperation
Bureau became publicly known last
month.
According to an account of Colonel
Verster's arrest given to the inquiry to-
day, the police unit involved was able to
locate the colonel only after extensive
sleuthing, despite the fact that several
former policemen working for the colonel have been named in court docu-
ments as suspects in the killings of Mr.
Lubowski and Mr. Webster.
At today's session, lawyers for the in-
quiry put forth a list of 71 politically
, linked killings that have not been
solved, some of them going back to
11977.
The Washington Post
The New York Times
The Washington Times
The Wall Street Journal
A3
The Christian Science Monitor
New York Daily News
USA Today
The Chicago Tribune
,Date
112.4 ,e 1.994
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Approved for Release: 2017/07/13 006537689