Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-09-27

LEON A MAREE: I'm prepared to speak about any overseas operations, anything where I was involved in, which I have made available through my lawyer.  In certain instances I prefer not to mention names of people who assisted me overseas for their own safety.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Just forgetting for a minute about naming names, did you - so you're saying whether or not your activities were illegal, you are prepared to talk about them?

LEON A MAREE: Yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Have you, in your evidence-in-chief broadly covered both your lawful and unlawful activities outside of the Republic?

LEON A MAREE: Yes, I have.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So you're telling us you haven't left anything important out?

LEON A MAREE: Correct.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, Mr Kahanovitz, just on that question.  What unlawful activities did you have overseas, because you've just answered a question saying you've covered both your lawful and unlawful activities overseas and my interpretation of your evidence, well I didn't hear, I can't recall having heard anything unlawful overseas.

LEON A MAREE: Mr Chairman, certain things I may have done overseas, may amount in that country to espionage or something, it could just be going through that country and doing something, that I've done, but there was instruction to go and do anything unlawful overseas, that's what I mean.

MR KAHANOVITZ: If I understand, just in broad terms, all you ever did overseas was, let's forget about Namibia for a minute, all you ever did was establish business contacts.  It may be that at some stage in the future, that business front or those business contacts were to be used for some other purpose.

LEON A MAREE: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But as I understood your evidence, up to the point that you left the CCB, whatever business initiatives you had launched outside of the Republic were never used for purposes of spying, for instance.

LEON A MAREE: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Or for any other unlawful purpose.

LEON A MAREE: Correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: What you appear to be saying in your evidence-in-chief was that you were aware that if Staal Burger says to you:  "Here Mr Maree, here's the money to go to Germany.  Go to Germany, here's the money to start a business, etc, etc, he's not doing that for your personal benefit, he's doing that because he intends to deploy you at some stage in the future to perform CCB activities?

LEON A MAREE: Correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: All you're really saying is up until the time that the CCB was disbanded, you were never informed what the nature of those activities would be.

LEON A MAREE: That's correct.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But surely it must have been intimated to you what the nature of those activities would be?

LEON A MAREE: No, it wasn't.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So you were happily going off to - planning to go and live in Germany and you had no idea in your own mind after you'd moved your family there, moved into a house, established business and so on and so forth, you had no idea in your own mind what tasks you might be called upon to do.

LEON A MAREE: No, I think that would be speculation.  Any intelligence work, you'd have to put a base down and then you would receive your instructions as to whatever you had to do once you were there.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, but we know you weren't working for the NIA or a pure intelligence gathering organisation.  We know you were working for the CCB.

LEON A MAREE: Yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And that the CCB did not exist for the purposes of gathering pure intelligence, that's been the evidence all along.

LEON A MAREE: Yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So if you were being sent to Germany, you weren't being sent there merely to collect information.

LEON A MAREE: I don't think  you quite understand.  Everybody in the CCB weren't operators who had to go and eliminate people, there were back-up people as well and logistics people to help people, so everybody, if you worked in the CCB, it doesn't necessarily mean that, as the evidence said that's what the CCB does, there has to be back-up.

MR KAHANOVITZ: What do you mean when you say there has to be back-up?

LEON A MAREE: For example, in Europe, arranging safe houses, finances, logistics.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, I can understand that you need to find out where the target lives, you need to plan escape routes.

LEON A MAREE: No, that's not what I said, no, that's not my evidence.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Well what are you going to use your safe house for?

LEON A MAREE: No, no, not for me.  If somebody else in the unit needed to use it, the host agent in that particular country, because he would know the local conditions, could assist in doing that, arranging a house and things like that.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Right.  So you were going to be the CCB's man in Germany?

LEON A MAREE: Well, this is what I presumed, yes.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Alright.  Why Germany?

LEON A MAREE: I don't know.

MR KAHANOVITZ: So you went through all these stages and you agree to move to Germany and you had absolutely no idea in your own mind why the CCB was in the least bit interested in Germany?

LEON A MAREE: No.

CHAIRPERSON: Did you not ask?  Did you not say well, why not Belgium, or some other country?

LEON A MAREE: No, Sir, they asked me or they told me that they need somebody established in Germany and I went along with it.  I had no reason to ask why.

MR KAHANOVITZ: You see, it's easier for us to understand here when we know that the ANC had bases, if you talk about Zambia and so on, or Angola, everybody understands that evidence and why the CCB might be interested in operating in Zambia or Angola.  Why might the CCB need a safe house in Germany, that's what we don't understand.

LEON A MAREE: I can't answer that.  I don't know.  I didn't make the decision.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Okay.  But what's also interesting is, I don't know if you were here, but neither Mr Burger certainly made no mention of the evidence that you've just given, so he can't help us.  Do you speak German?

LEON A MAREE: No, I don't.

CHAIRPERSON: Whereabouts did you actually establish in Germany?

LEON A MAREE: In Stuttgart.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And you also have no idea why it would be Stuttgart, as opposed to Berlin or Munich?

LEON A MAREE: No, I don't.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Mr Burger just told you go to Stuttgart.

LEON A MAREE: No, no, I went to Munich first and then from there to Stuttgart.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Yes, but who said:  "Go to Stuttgart?"

LEON A MAREE: I did it on my own.

MR KAHANOVITZ: Why Stuttgart?

LEON A MAREE: That's where my business contacts for the Lema contract was with them, most of the businesses were in the Stuttgart area, that's why I decided on Stuttgart, in place of Munich.

MR KAHANOVITZ: And what kind of business was Lema going to do there?

LEON A MAREE: I placed advertisements for German business partners in German newspapers.

MR KAHANOVITZ: To perform what sort of business?

LEON A MAREE: Trade with South African business.

MR KAHANOVITZ: But what form of trade?  What was going to be sold?

LEON A MAREE: I asked for German products in South Africa, agricultural products and from South Africa, the other way around, sorry.  Agricultural products from South Africa electronic stuff from Germany and I received on that about 20 or 30 replies with people we would like to meet and most of them were from the Stuttgart area.

MR LAX: Can I just interpose, Mr Kahanovitz, while you're looking at your papers?  What puzzles me is that you seem to have gone to establishing a base in Germany without any guidelines whatsoever.  You see, if one's going to establish a base somewhere, surely you must have in your mind a broad picture of what objectives you're going to have.  What purpose is that base going to serve.  What are the broad nature of the operations that are going to be conducted, so that you can have an appropriate structure in place to serve whatever purposes you're going to need.  You didn't have any of that.