Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 2000-11-18

MR COETZEE: If I can, I just wish to find that in my Heads where I deal with that.  Yes, that's paragraph 10 on page 4 of my Heads.  With great respect Mr Commissioner, to assess this properly one needs to take cognisance of the fact that Mr Barnard was initially, from the start, treated in a different fashion as any of the other members of the CCB.  He was first of all recruited by Mr Verster himself, which in his own criteria for the discipline in his unit would have been a tremendous security breach.  For him as head of this unit or Director of this unit to have direct contact, as he has stated himself, with an unaware member.
	Then if one further has regard to the fact as Mr Barnard has testified, that from the beginning they were not interested in his qualifications in any other use than in his criminal contacts as well as his skill with weaponry.
	Then a very important factor which clearly states or shows that he was throughout a member of the CCB, is that he was given a pager, he was given a dead letter box to receive his instructions from, from various members of the CCB.  Through those channels he was instructed, Luitingh had communications with him which it seems from the documentation is common cause.  Various other had ... 
	But also a very important factor is that Kobus le Roux from the Namibian branch of the CCB, made contact with him through this pager system.  The only way in which Kobus le Roux could have reached him in this system or know about him or knew how to reach Mr Barnard, was if he was in fact a member of the CCB.  Where would he - I mean it is not as if it is general knowledge to any person, especially in the need-to-know basis in which the CCB operated, that every foreign operator, whoever, would have known about Mr Barnard's involvement and availability in the CCB.
	If one takes these aspects, together with the fact that he received his financial support throughout from the CCB, he had a motor vehicle which he was supplied with as the other aware members, and there's no evidence that any other unaware member was supplied with a motor vehicle of the same calibre in any way as Mr Barnard has been supplied with and on termination or alleged termination of his employment by the CCB, they did not tell him: "Mr Barnard, bring your vehicle back, bring whatever implements of your trade that you have in your possession, bring everything back".  So that together with the post facto factor that his legal costs in all the inquests and commission proceedings on a later stage were paid by the Defence Force.
	Now the argument was raised that yes, there were also other aspects which were involved with the Goldstone Commission and the Harms Commission, but not in the Webster Inquest.  That was purely an incident which happened during the period when he was - it was only that the inquest dealt with, what they allege he was a rogue agent acting on his own, then it would have been easy to disassociate themselves from him to say: "We don't know who you are, we don't want to have anything to do with you".  But that's not what they did.
	Mr Commissioner, thereafter the immediate transfer of the applicant from the CCB into the DCC, if this security breach with the McQuillan project was viewed in such a serious light, why in heaven's name would they have used him in the next generation of dirty tricks?  That with great respect, is a very clear indication.  That, also coupled with the cross-examination by Mr Wessels of Calla Botha, from the documentation he was referred to and I'm referring to bundle L, page 3316, it is clear from the questioning that happened there and the summations that were made there, that in fact Mr Barnard was considered to still be a member of the CCB, because they said they should consider firing him.  And that is at a stage when it was supposedly to have been common cause that he was already fired.
	Mr Commissioner with great respect, that is one aspect which is very clear, that Mr Barnard was at all relevant times an agent in the service of the CCB.  When Gen Webb testified I questioned him on the applicability of the regiment of discipline, I believe that in English that is the translation, whether that was applicable to also members of the CCB, for example Mr Barnard, and the answer was yes, categorically yes. 
	Now understandably we are dealing here with a secretive organisation which you cannot hire and fire and think you can do that with impunity, because of the knowledge that people have and they might bear a grudge, but at least to fire a person from such a position there had to be some kind of a disciplinary hearing or a trial or whatever kind of action needed to be taken to just summarily dismiss a person.  The risk of just telling you today: "You're an agent, you know all this about this secretive organisation, now we fire you", with great respect, it is highly unlikely that an organisation such as the CCB would have done that.  They would have redeployed a person, they would have handled him differently.  Which is exactly what they did here, they handled him differently.  They used him as the dog to do the dirty work.  Which is exactly what he had to do.  
	This organisation was formed as Mr Verster has indicated in his evidence, as a civilian strike force, but where's the strike?  To do the strike you need people to do the strike and that's exactly where Mr Barnard came in.  He was the type of person they were looking for as the strike in the strike force.  Now this put into perspective, the application of Mr Barnard, the fact that he was, whenever there was something that needed to be done which would be in a situation where the ordinary members of the CCB could have been exposed, they bring Mr Barnard to do that kind of work.
	For example, if we can deal with the Omar matter.  On probabilities, with great respect, on probabilities to fly Mr Barnard from Johannesburg to Cape Town to do monitoring of Adv Omar, it doesn't make sense.  He's a person that stands out from the community there, he even complained that in what he had to do he was so visible that it would have been extremely dangerous for him and for the organisation to use a person like himself for monitoring purposes.  It is not as if he had any special knowledge about either Adv Omar nor the surroundings in Cape Town.  
	It would have been understandable if Mr Barnard was a person who moved around freely amongst the legal fraternity in Cape Town, to say he has a special ability to monitor Adv Omar, that's why we're going to use him to monitor Adv Omar.  But that was never the intention.  The intention of bringing Ferdi Barnard to Cape Town was to assassinate Adv Omar, and that is exactly what he said he came to do.
	My learned colleague Mr Martini, on two occasions he said that nowhere did Mr Barnard testify that he got an order to assassinate Adv Omar, but the passage which he read himself from page 2668, he read:
"I was requested to go and kill Dullah Omar"
It's clearly stated here.
	Furthermore, reference was made to the finding of Judge Els on his matter of guilt, and I'm referring to the bundle which we were supplied with extracts from the Ferdi Barnard Judgment and as it is numbered here with an 11, but it's actually page 230 from the Judgment, and I'm going to read it for the benefit of the Commission.  It's in Afrikaans:
"We are satisfied that Barnard's evidence regarding the affidavit which the accused made, can be accepted.  According to the statement he waited for Omar outside the house with the firearm in order to shoot him dead.  We are satisfied that the accused intended to commit murder and that this action can be regarded as an executive action."
Exactly as the testimony of Mr Barnard stated he did.  There's no discrepancy there at all.  
	With regard to the credibility of Mr Barnard, with great respect, if the only criticism that can be levelled against him is his evidence regarding the firearm, whether he got it via Slang van Zyl from Peaches, or directly from Peaches.  With great respect, that is minuscule.  It is not necessarily the hand that hands it to you, it is where does it come from?  It comes from Peaches.  And that with great respect, that tends on probabilities in this matter, this is not even probabilities, this is probabilities.  
	If one then also looks at the Apie project, with great respect Mr Commissioner, and it is hearsay evidence what Mr Barnard has testified, but it is the only credible explanation that there could be for the actions.  Why else would an organisation such as the CCB be involved with games?  Because to scare the gardeners, with great respect, can never be the priority of such an organisation.
	If one feels tempted to criticise Mr Barnard for his testimony and the fact that he did not apply for amnesty for these various acts, for example the killing of David Webster, the Rosskam matter, even possibly Mark Francis's murder, it must be noted that the government had run away from him, from their responsibility with regard to Mr Barnard.  Is it really so necessary then or absolutely that you can blame him from running away from his acts?  It follows, I mean the government runs away from me and my acts, let me run away from it myself, I'm also not going to stand for anything that you can't prove.  I'm not going to stand for anything like that.  	And that's why - the only thing he knew that they could prove was his involvement with the Apie project and with the Omar project, that's why he made that application.  And with great respect, that Mr Barnard lied his whole life, that is so, but to say here that Mr Barnard can not be believed for what he came to tell this Commission, because of the fact that he was a liar previously in his life, that would disqualify, with great respect, almost seventy percent of all applicants that have appeared in these applications.  And basically all of these applicants ... ipso facto, because not one of them stands here with a clean slate.  Perhaps excluding Gen Webb, but the rest of them - maybe Gen Webb as well, but the rest of all the applicants in most of applications - I haven't been involved in so many, have been people with a background of deception and lies.
	To deal with an aspect of proportionality regarding the actions of Mr Barnard, it is serious actions, to go out and assassinate a person in the likes of Adv Omar cannot be justified and I do not attempt to justify the actions, but one needs to take into consideration that you get an agent here who is instructed to go and murder, for him to go and assess and evaluate the information with which he is supplied, it is not reasonable to expect of him, the man to do the dirty work now to go and follow up and see whether the information with which he is supplied which identifies the target, whether that information is correct.  He's supplied with information and with a task. 'this is the man, he needs to be taken out because this is what he's doing and this is the danger which he poses'.
	If one takes reasonability into account that's what his task is, that is what is in his mind, that is what he's going to go and do.  And if he then with hindsight, shows that it was an unlikely target or a target which should never have been identified, with great respect, that blame cannot be put before him, in front of him, because that is not where he fits into a long line of operatives with various line functions.  For example, you do information, you do this, you do that.
	If one takes into account the evidence of Mr Verster regarding the civilian strike force it is, with respect, clear that the applicant acted within the course and scope of his employment with the CCB.  And the argument might be raised that he did that for money because of the bonuses which he received, but one needs to take into consideration that certainly nobody, not nobody, there are few people that will be prepared to take that kind of risk just for king and country.  To say: "I'm such a patriot, don't pay me, I'll do the dirty work for nothing", and that's unfortunately not a very realistic picture.  We had a person here who came out of prison, who took up employment and who had the opportunity of getting remunerated for that employment.  But that does not take away from the fact that what he did, he did in the line of his duty in the course of scope, that he associated himself with the struggle which was currently at that stage on everybody's mind ...(intervention)