Amnesty Hearings — Durban — 1999-10-07

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Basically Conference never spoke percentages.  Basically Conference said we would accept civilian casualties in order to strike at Security Force personnel.  Now that was left to Commanders or operatives to then deal with.  To my mind, it had to be an overwhelming number of Security Force personnel.

MR RICHARD: Thank you, Chair.  You've used the word overwhelming.  In the sense that it does have a connotation of proportion, give me an idea of whether 50% would be overwhelming, or 80% would be overwhelming.

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: I would say firstly, if those people are gathered in one place, then you already have them within a confined area and if there are civilians on the further perimeters of it, you find that those people are concentrated in a particular spot and then I would say 60/70%.

MR RICHARD: So to relate it to this specific event that we're debating at the moment, what it would mean is that, to use the hypothetical examples I've been on about before, if there was a table of 5 policemen, firemen, traffic police, soldiers at one table in a restaurant capable of seating a couple of hundred people or a place of entertainment, would that constitute a high concentration or not?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: No, it would not.

MR RICHARD: Now it goes further.  You've heard the evidence of Mr McBride regarding what information gathering was conducted.  If you had heard the following; Mr Webster says that he has information that a place is infested, factor 1, but that is hearsay, you've heard discussion from various people or a person at the Allan Taylor residence at the University that there are Security personnel concentrated at a particular place, the third factor was on a particular night and only one night, two trips were made when a group leaving the police barracks was followed to see where they went and one of the two groups went to a particular venue and on that same night, the information gatherer heard somebody make a statement "may the Force be with you."  Would you believe that in the context of an attack on a hotel situated on the Durban beach front in one of the busiest entertainment areas of the town, that was sufficient intelligence gathering?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: No, I would have attempted and here I'm talking of myself, to get further intelligence information.  I would have tried to verify that more Security Force personnel frequented that place.

MR RICHARD: Now, taking into account that each one of those four factors can be isolated in time and certainly would not tell anyone as to who would be in that complex of entertainment venues on any particular night, do you think it was sufficient?

ABOOBAKER ISMAIL: Perhaps it was not sufficient, but again here I must state that they in their minds and here in this case in Mr McBride's mind, he thought he had verified it and he's also testified and has said he also relied on the previous information that had been gleaned by Gordon Webster, he didn't then test that further information.  He was told it was infested by Security Force personnel.  I, in my turn, did not test the information that they had because the specific target, the Why Not Bar, was not discussed with me and perhaps that is the mistake that I made, but they, or Mr McBride had thought that that place had a concentration of Security Force personnel and he acted on the basis of that.

MR RICHARD: Now, I'm going to give a more contextual proposition and again it relates to an objective opinion of the contextual situation, rather than a subjective belief that Mr McBride might have had at the time.  If it is established that the following might have been the case, that firstly once in two years about 20 people from the Dunottar Air Force training base in Pretoria would come and hold a weekend holiday get-together at that specific hotel, the second point, that if one took a very imprecise survey, but the reliance of the bar staff's memory and said, of all the patrons who might come in and out of that establishment over an extended period, more than 6 months, there might have been a group of about 15 to 20 firemen, traffic police, policemen, soldiers that individually would come on odd occasions.

CHAIRPERSON: Sorry, I didn't quite understand that.   A group that would individually come - do you mean a group of 20 coming at a time, or there being 20 but not as a group, but just - if you could just explain?  I couldn't understand it.

MR RICHARD: It's the second proposition that I'm making.  There were approximately 15 to 20 people who would not ever congregate there all at one time, but out of that group, individuals within that group, would periodically visit the venue, not as a group though.  The next leg extends to that, that on no particular evening or afternoon, or day for that matter, would there ever be more than and then I'm using the words more than very deliberately, four or five individual members of that classification of people that fall within the broad definition of Security personnel, that's inclusive of traffic cops, firemen, police, soldiers etc.  Now my question on that proposition is quite simple.  If you had at the time been given those facts and were asked the question and the question that you're being asked is:  We do not know who will be in the Why Not pub or in its neighbouring Magoo's bar on the night we intend effecting the attack and will have no idea as to who will be inside, should we or should we not go ahead with the attack?  At that time in 1986, do you think you would have said, "Yes, carry on with the mission" or "No, stop"?

MR BERGER: Chairperson, before Mr Ismail gives an answer to that question and if he wants to he can, but after such a convoluted question, first of all, I don't know if one can be expected to answer that question clearly, but more as a matter of principle, Chairperson, my learned friend Mr Richard says, don't have regard to what Mr McBride had in his mind and the information he had and don't have regard to what you had in your mind and the information you had and then poses a specific question.  The provisions of Section 20(ii) of the Act are very clear and that it is the person's state of mind that is the crucial inquiry at any particular stage of these Hearings.  It's not some facts which, I don't know where Mr Richard gets the facts from in the first place because it's not evidence before this Committee, but it's the person's state of mind that is the relevant inquiry and so what Mr McBride had in his mind and what Mr Ismail had in his mind is the pertinent inquiry, not some hypothetical situation that Mr Richard might want to ask about.