Amnesty Hearings — Boksburg — 1998-09-15

JOHN KEANE: (sworn states)
	I will begin again.  I have followed the trial and the proceedings and fail to understand why Koekemoer has not been summonsed to appear before this Commission.  Apparently he has not been granted indemnity from prosecution, nor has he applied for amnesty.  I consider the Commission had a mandate to extract the whole truth and will fail in it's duty if he is not called.  I'm not entirely satisfied with the investigation and totally disillusioned that they failed to uplift Koekemoer's report back file which seems to me to be of the utmost importance and highly relevant to these proceedings.  
	Furthermore, they failed to point out that there were two policemen present who co-operated with the accused.  With regard to the Bree Street bomb, police complicity was apparent to many witnesses and having been informed that the car contained a bomb they failed in their duty to issue a warning while smoke was pouring from the car.  According to three newspaper reports, the police stopped a car with three blacks in it and spread-eagled them on the road and released them moments before the bomb exploded.  And something else I fail to see is why they placed the bomb in Bree Street, it didn't seem to come out in the evidence.  Why they selected that spot
or why they put it there at all, there didn't seem to be any reason for it.  
	Our loss has been so great that we will never in our few remaining years be able to come to terms with my daughter's murder.

MS CAMBANIS: Thank you very much Mr Keane.  Thank you Mr Chair.
NO FURTHER QUESTIONS BY MS CAMBANIS

CHAIRPERSON: Are there any questions of Mr Keane?
Thank you.
WITNESS EXCUSED

MS CAMBANIS: Mr Chair I've already indicated that the
remaining person that I represent is not available and a statement will be submitted to Mr Prior.  Thank you.
None other.

CHAIRPERSON: None?

MS VAN DER WALT: There was a document which I forgot to hand in, I don't have copies for the other members of the panel but it is Mr Abie Fourie, Abraham Christoffel Fourie's affidavit which is aimed at rectifying his sentence of guilt.  If you will remember, Chairperson, he was under the impression that he was found guilty on all charges whilst he was actually only found guilty on the charges of the pipe bomb.  I thought that this should be placed in an affidavit form in order to place it on record correctly.  As it pleases you chair.  At a later stage it was put to him that he was found guilty only with regard to the pipe bombs.  I would appreciate if I would be allowed to submit this along with copies as an exhibit and that is all which I have left.

ADV PRIOR: ...[inaudible] the Committee to an affidavit of Theunis Louis Pretorius which regards the Koekemoer matter and I think the affidavit is self-explanatory and possibly, I don't know if the Committee wishes to hear me on why Koekemoer wasn't called?  I could briefly, possibly in a few...

CHAIRPERSON: Please.

ADV PRIOR: Mr Chairman, as evidence leader, the situation was assessed and Koekemoer who, it was common cause at the trial, was a police informer and common cause that he built or assisted in building the bombs that went off in the various places.  It was on record - he had not applied for amnesty, he was informed, as I understand, as an implicated person.  He chose not to appear at these proceedings.  The question of him or his activities in so far as his information to the police is concerned was raised by the applicants.  In as much as Koekemoer's activities with the police was unknown to the applicants, it could not have effected the facts upon which the applications are based.  The fact that Koekemoer may have been in complicity with the police or the police in complicity with Koekemoer would not have taken the applications any further.
	Furthermore, I understood from the witness protection department of the TRC, Advocate McAdam, that Koekemoer had been relocated in terms of a justice witness programme, he received a new identity and there was also a very strong possibility that he was either assisting the Attorney General in other prosecutions and for that reason the Attorney General was not prepared in terms of Section, I think, 31 of the Act to allow or permit Koekemoer to give evidence, in other words to his prejudice.  That situation being the case, the likelihood that Koekemoer's legal representative would have then consented to him to have given evidence was regarded and viewed as being remote and all those facts taken together, I was satisfied that the matter not be pursued and for that reason Koekemoer - I did not insist that Koekemoer be brought.  I'm also - there's obviously Koekemoer ....[intervention]

CHAIRPERSON: I don't think even if you insisted you could have succeeded.

ADV PRIOR: Thank you Mr Chairman.  Mr Chairman, obviously the intrigues behind and whoever was handling him is contained in the affidavit of Superintendent Pretorius and in particular paragraph 8, he indicates that the police were unaware that he in fact was manufacturing the bombs.  This only came out after his arrest.  Thank you Mr Chairman.