South Africa to prosecute 4 apartheid-era cops for murder

[Judi Lynn]

Source: Associated Press

South Africa to prosecute 4 apartheid-era cops for murder

Christopher Torchia and Andrew Selsky, Associated Press

Updated 12:11 pm, Tuesday, February 9, 2016

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The body of a young anti-apartheid activist who was kidnapped and tortured in 1983 by South African police has never been found, her family never able to mourn at a grave, her killers not sent to prison.

Now, more than three decades later, prosecutors plan to charge four police officers for the murder of Nokuthula Simelane after Simelane's family went to court to force the National Prosecuting Authority to press charges.

The new move against the former policemen goes to the heart of long-running tension in South Africa over the push for reconciliation among the country's racial groups and the desire to punish perpetrators of human rights abuses during the traumatic decades that preceded multi-racial elections in 1994. But the case is murky, with some of the officers involved having admitted to kidnapping and torturing the young woman, but claiming they released her after she agreed to be an informant.

The 23-year-old, freshly graduated from university, had been a courier for the armed wing of the then-banned African National Congress when she was snatched by the police and tortured for weeks, according to the officers' own testimony 16 years ago to South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/crime/article/South-Africa-prosecute-4-apartheid-era-cops-for-6817063.php

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Nokuthula Simelane



statue of Nokuthula in Bethal Image: KEVIN SUTHERLAND. '[/center]

[polly7]

1. Terrible story.

Justice, such a long time coming ... so sad her father died before he could see this.

[Jack Rabbit]

2. K/R

[noretreatnosurrender]

3. Gut Wrenching

As is this:

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which could grant amnesty to those who fully confessed to human rights abuses committed during apartheid, recommended that more than 300 cases be prosecuted, but the Simelane murder is "one of the only" cases pursued by prosecutors, according to a statement from an attorney for Simelane's family and a lawyer for the Southern Africa Litigation Centre, which is involved in the case.

There are so many cases that should be prosecuted but aren't. I hope justice is at least done in the only case that is being prosecuted.