Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-11-17

MR B WILLIAMS: Yes, what one is coming to is that arresting people for the purposes of processing them through the criminal justice system was not part of your operation, not so?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It was, yes, and the instruction was clearly from Colonel de Kock when we arrested somebody we had to hand him over to the local security branch as soon as possible, who would then cause the normal process of justice to take its course.

MR B WILLIAMS: Do you recall, sorry, go ahead Mr Bellingan.

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: We did not just catch people, pick them up from the street, detain them and then just do what we wanted to, there were certain laid down procedures.

MR B WILLIAMS: Was it not the policy of Vlakplaas that askaris, for example, were not to be, not to given evidence in court ever?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: No, they did testify in terrorism trials as Mr X and Mr Y, but as far as possible we tried to keep them away from trials, because they were being exposed and their lives were at risk.  Their colleagues sent out documentation and they were wanted people, they were hunted by their former and they would have been hunted down and eliminated.  So, we wanted to actually keep them away from the limelight so that their identities remained a secret.

MR B WILLIAMS: You see, Mr Bellingan, the point here is that your operatives at Vlakplaas worked, you can tell me if I am correct or incorrect, they worked on the basis that if they captured people, I am not going to grace you with the term arrest, if you captured people, there was one of three options available to them.  Either they became an askari, is that correct?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: That is correct, except if the local security police had quite a sizeable docket on that person, that he was involved in active terror and then they would have taken it through the legal channels.

MR B WILLIAMS: Right, or that person became an informer.  Am I correct?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Yes, we turned many of them and sent them back into their organisations.

MR B WILLIAMS: Or, thirdly, that person died?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: No, I was not involved in those kinds of cases where we captured a person and just shot him or caused him to be killed.

MR B WILLIAMS: Are you saying today with, in all honesty, Mr Bellingan, that you are not aware of a situation where people were arrested, who refused to comply with your requirements and were, therefore, eliminated, as you put it?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I do not want to talk for other people and on their behalfs, so I cannot comment on those cases.

MR B WILLIAMS: The question is asked whether you were personally involved, the question is asked are you aware of it?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Yes, I have heard about it.

MR B WILLIAMS: So, it was the other option?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I cannot say that today.

MR B WILLIAMS: Perhaps you can assist the Committee in understanding how it was, as a human being, that you could reconcile yourself with this kind of activity for 11, 12 years.  Perhaps you can explain to us?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I grew up in a very strong Afrikaans, Christian, Nationalist home.  I believed in what the Government and the National Party and the police were doing and we only woke up when we realised that the senior people had actually stabbed us in the back, but we came from a culture in where we believed in what we were doing.

MR B WILLIAMS: I have never understood the Christian belief to justify unlawful killing.  Is that how you understand the Christian belief?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I am not going to speculate on that, but if the Israeli Defence Force commits cross-border raids it is the same thing.  We believed in the same way as they believed in what they are doing.  Today I can say it was wrong and I do not want to become involved in it and I want to live a clean life and become involved in reconciliation, but at that time I believed in it.  Many other countries have Christian defence forces and politicians, they also become involved in cross-border raids, etcetera.  We believed in what we were doing as Christians?

MR B WILLIAMS: You see, what concerns one, Mr Bellingan, is the fact that you are saying, to use your words, I enjoyed my work, it is not what you believed in, it is what you actually, you enjoyed it.  Now, can you explain to the Committee what was enjoyable or delightful about being party to Vlakplaas and the kind of operations that they got involved in?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Perhaps he is interpreting my words incorrectly. I did not actually mean to say that I enjoyed my work in the way you enjoy an ice-cream, but I liked the work that I did.  I believed in it and I thought I was making a contribution in keeping my country safe.  So, in the same way as any other policeman in Murder or Robbery or Narcotics Bureau or whatever enjoyed their jobs.  In the same way I enjoyed my job.

MR B WILLIAMS: How did you measure, Captain Bellingan, the success of the various operations that you were involved in?  What was your measure of success?  Was it the amount of people who were killed?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: No, I can count on the fingers of one hand the type, number of shooting incidents which I was involved in, but I never kept track of the number of people arrested and so on.  So, you did not make like little notches on the barrel of your gun or whatever, you simply did your work, you did not keep tally.

MR B WILLIAMS: In this particular operation, the Guguletu 7, I will come back to it in more detail, but if I can just ask you at this stage, would you agree that had you arrested those individuals you would have been able to achieve the objectives that you wanted to achieve, namely infiltration, for example?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It is difficult to say.  I think if we could have arrested them by, then by means of the askaris we could have proved a prima facia case against them, but we knew it would not be easy.  Jimmy and Eric told us they were very dangerous people.  It was not a matter of just taking out your appointment certificate and arrest them.  I expected it to be quite a difficult matter.

MR B WILLIAMS: Perhaps I stated the question incorrectly.  Did you not believe that you, had you arrested these people, you would have been able to obtain information from them?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: That would have been the task of the local security branch to do that interrogation and to actually gather together the exhibits and witnesses and evidence.

MR B WILLIAMS: So, are you saying to the Committee today that the possibility of arresting these individuals was not part of your plan at all?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It was part of the planning, but in my heart of hearts I knew that it would not be easy.  I did not actually lay much store by the fact that there would be an arrest, but it might have been the view of some of the seniors.

MR B WILLIAMS: Would you say that you would have, it would have been more profitable to arrest these people?  I ask you that question again.

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: It is always, in a way, better to arrest these people or profitable to arrest the people, but if they train their guns on you, then you have to shoot back, but if you can arrest them, then it is actually more beneficial in the, at the end of the day, because then you can extract more information.

MR B WILLIAMS: This is precisely my point.  These are some of the things that you raise in your application, that there is a lot of benefit to be derived from arresting people, not so?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: Yes, there are many benefits.

MR B WILLIAMS: Now, can you tell the Committee why you considered, in your own words, this operation to be 100% successful?

W RIAAN BELLINGAN: I would not say that the operation was 100% successful.  There was, however, no loss of life, but at the end of the day you had seven corpses and you had funerals and every weekend there were riots.  So, that also did not solve the problem.