Amnesty Hearings — Johannesburg — 1998-05-06

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: But even a rifle, Mr Chairperson, can become  such a weapon if it is aimed willy-nilly at anybody it becomes a terrorist weapon.  I would suggest in Soweto, when members of the Defence Force and the Police aimed and fired at school children, then were they being terrorists?  Yes they can shoot specifically at things that they aimed at, but what did they aim at? Children.  We aimed at military personnel, that is the difference.  The legitimate target, the end was to strike at military personnel.

MR VISSER: Just to make my point, will you look at volume 6, page 100.  This is a schedule 3 presented by the TRC and it says in paragraph  1
"Another category of violence during the armed struggle was the use of car bombs by the liberation movements, specifically the ANC".
Paragraph 2 - 
"Once again this devastating method of attack caused great harm,  mostly to innocent civilians."
Paragraph 3 -
"Table 1 annexed hereto, gives particulars of ten prominent incidents involving car bombs with the following results:"
It then sets out a column on the left hand side stating:
"Civilians killed - 28, Injured - 535."
Let's just stop there.

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairperson ...(intervention)

MR VISSER: No you will you allow me to finish the question?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Yes certainly.

CHAIRPERSON: Mr Visser, who's the author of that paper?

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman, perhaps Mr Steenkamp can tell you this is a document that's been presented to us by your Committee.

MR STEENKAMP: According to the index it's an SAPS summary sir.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.  It obviously doesn't include the Church Street bombing.

MR VISSER: We would believe that those figures are far too low because Church Street bomb, wasn't it 86 military injured and this says 13.

MR VISSER: Yes indeed, quite correct, we certainly don't know whether that particular incident includes that incident of the Church Street car bomb, yes no we don't Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Continue with your questions.

MR VISSER: Thank you.  But I'm trying to make a point here and the point is this, doesn't that show, whether it's right or wrong, but within acceptable figures, doesn't that show how indiscriminate a car bomb kills?

MR TRENGOVE: Yes but if the figures are inaccurate then they can't be used to show anything and they're on the face of it highly inaccurate.

DR TSOTSI: Because Mr Visser again if you rely on page 100
and you show us those figures, are you saying to the witness those are 100% correct for instance, in those random 10 incidents taken of car bombs?

MR VISSER: I must accept that they're correct because they're provided here Mr Chairman as a document.

CHAIRPERSON: I think I would like to know a little bit more about it because we've got a table with two columns, "civilians killed, security forces killed, civilians injured, security forces injured." One doesn't know - what I'm trying to get at is, if those car bombs referred to here, the ten prominent incidents, what the targets were, where they were, if the target is a military one then one would expect the military figures to be high, like the Church Street, but it's not here and we don't know who planted those bombs either.

MR TRENGOVE: With respect Sir we do know that this list is grossly inaccurate because the breakdown appears at page 101.  The first of the 10 car bombs in relation to which the statistics are given is the very incident we're talking about but according to these statistics ...(intervention)

CHAIRPERSON: They say two injured. ...(intervention)

MR TRENGOVE: Only two military personnel were injured and 217 civilians.  Now we know from what my learned friend has put that those figures are grossly distorted.

CHAIRPERSON: I don't think that we can rely on this too much, sorry Mr Steenkamp.

MR STEENKAMP: Sorry Mr Chairman, Mr Chairman we will definitely never, actually what we really tried to do is to get the full report on those statistics; we've got specific individuals who are preparing the report for that, those documents will be placed before the Commission.

CHAIRPERSON: I'd like to see the document relied upon to say that there were two injured people in the Church Street car bomb ...(intervention)

MR STEENKAMP: Ja it's clearly not right, we'll get the correct information Mr Chairman.

CHAIRPERSON: Thank you.

MR VISSER: Thank you Mr Chairman.  Reverting though to our figures, our figures are 114 as opposed to 86, surely you must concede the indiscriminate way in which a bomb affects people, injure people, kill people, including innocent people.

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairperson, I'd like to state once again, the positioning of the vehicle, what it was aimed at were those military people.  At the end when that explosion happened and people were killed or injured we have the results we have, but I want to state quite clearly that that was targeted at military personnel.

MR VISSER: You see that's precisely the problem which I have; I just don't comprehend how you target a motor car bomb.  In fact we know that it wasn't localised.  We know that buildings on the other side of the street were damaged, people were killed, people were injured, how do you point a car bomb, you see, that's my problem?

JUDGE PILLAY: But Mr Visser isn't it common cause that operation went wrong at some stage, because even those two who were the operatives died?

MR VISSER: Nothing went materially wrong.  The only thing that...(intervention)

JUDGE PILLAY: I would reckon death is something material.

MR VISSER: Pardon?

JUDGE PILLAY: The death of those two operatives is something material.

MR VISSER: Well we're talking about your question to me.  Nothing went wrong in the planning except that it went off two to three minutes earlier, but ...(intervention)

JUDGE PILLAY: I'm just pointing out that your question presupposes that all the plans went according to what Mr Ismail planned.  We're not really sure.

MR VISSER: Well if my learned friend Mr Trengove's suggestion to the witness which hook he didn't take, if I may be allowed the expression, that had it been a little later there would have been more Army personnel and...(intervention).

MR TRENGOVE: I never made any such a suggestion at all and I resent the implication that I suggested something to the witness.

MR VISSER: It's a question of the record ...(intervention)

JUDGE PILLAY: Mr Visser I just raised the issue just to get clarity to be fair to the witness but perhaps you can also answer this question that gives me problems, do we know why Ruth First was killed?

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman we are not prepared on that issue at all.

JUDGE PILLAY: I'm not trying to get an answer out of you, it just becomes relevant in terms of the answers given by the witness - to me certainly.  It may not be relevant at the end of the day, I just wanted to find out if anybody knew why she was killed or why the letter bomb was directed at her.

MR VISSER: Mr Chairman frankly I don't even whether a letter bomb killed her.  The point in that regard was a question of a terrorist weapon I thought.

CHAIRPERSON: Can you repeat your question, I think that question was how can you target a car bomb?

MR VISSER: Yes that's the principle which I'm battling with.

CHAIRPERSON: That was the question.

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Mr Chairman if one looks at the reports from that operation, it states very clearly that the car bomb was placed right outside the target.  That it was right at the point where the military personnel were in that case and that is where it went off.  Now in this case it got right to the point of where it intended to strike, the only problem was it went off a few minutes prematurely.