Amnesty Hearings — Cape Town — 1997-07-14

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: It is difficult to say, I am not even sure if the passport was handed over immediately or not.  If it was handed over immediately, I suppose my action would have been different than a demanding way, if it was not handed over immediately.

MR KRUSE: I wonder if you can ever act in a normal way?

CHAIRPERSON: I am sorry I can't hear your question?

MR KRUSE: I say I wonder whether he ever can act in a normal way because as bad a state of mind I was, I remember and I could hear him abusing people in the house.

CHAIRPERSON: Well, that is how you must put your questions, you know.  Just telling him that.

MR KRUSE: I remember as bad as I was, that you were abusing people in the house, in front of the kid.

CHAIRPERSON: The question is did you abuse the people in the house at the time you went to ask for the passport?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: Could we define the abuse here?

MR KRUSE: Verbal abuse.

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: It is possible, yes.

MR KRUSE: Can you tell the Commission what state of mind I was in at that stage?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: Impossible to say Sir.

MR KRUSE: You don't remember.  You kept me awake the whole night, you gave me a black bag, you beat me up, you don't know what state of mind I was in?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: I cannot answer the question as to your state of mind.

CHAIRPERSON: We will assume that you were very, very distressed.  Whether he remembers or not.

MR KRUSE: He is the person who put me through this, doesn't he know what he is doing, what does he expect me to be like at the end of that treatment?

CHAIRPERSON: I am just saying that whether he remembers or not, we can assume that you must have been very distressed?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: I would concede this.

MR KRUSE: But this is my difficulty.  He seems to remember nothing.  I think if I tortured someone, even 20 years later, I would know the state of their mind after such treatment I had given people. This is the thing, I just don't find him answering the questions or wanting to say anything.

JUDGE WILSON: Doesn't it depend on how often and how many people you assaulted whether you can remember a particular individual?

MR KRUSE: But I think anyone taken through a systematic way of torture, which he works in a very systematic way, would end up in more or less the same state of mind.  Just the level of the state of mind would differ.

JUDGE WILSON: Can I ask another question at this stage, about another matter.  What was the importance of this passport?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: The information was that Mr Kruse was the Chief Logistics, or the intelligence that we had at that stage, the Chief Logistics person for acquiring weapons of war to come into, especially the Western Cape and then hiding them at specific places to be recovered at a later stage by MK soldiers.

CHAIRPERSON: How would a passport help that?  How would his passport throw light on that?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: It would possibly show us his movements through which border posts, Sir.

JUDGE WILSON: Yes.  It would show you that, but it wouldn't show you where he had hidden the weapons which were going to be used, would it?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: No, Sir.

JUDGE WILSON: And that would, as I understand your evidence, that was the most important function you had, as soon as you arrested somebody you question them to find out where the weapons were or where there other colleagues were?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: That is correct Sir.

JUDGE WILSON: Now, you seem to be able to remember questioning about a passport, you remember going to a house to see a passport, but you remember nothing whatsoever about questioning the Chief Logistic Officer, Chief Logistics person to find out where he had concealed all the weapons he had brought in, how is that.  Why have you got such a complete blank memory on that aspect?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: It is possible that somebody else interrogated him, but if I had interrogated him Sir, he did take us to an address which he has now conceded was a false address of one of his assistants.

MR KRUSE: Jeffery, let me refresh your memory perhaps on the issue.  Is it not true that you failed to get any information on where I had arms?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: That is correct, Sir.

MR KRUSE: Is it not true that you failed to get any of the structures under me?

CHAIRPERSON: Say that again, because I have difficulty?

MR KRUSE: He failed to discover any of the structures under me.  No one else was arrested because of my arrest.

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: That is correct, Sir.

MR KRUSE: But is your method not as the Judge is pointing out, the purpose of your methods, where you hung me up and gave me that, to get exactly that, what that not the purpose of you?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: That was the purpose of the exercise, but in your case, we didn't - we may have got certain information to who your assistants were, but we did not get any weapons of war or your detention did not lead to another arrest, if my memory does not fail me.

MR KRUSE: Is it true that the only thing you got, was UDF pamphlets?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: I think with your interrogation, we were also taken to an address where I think a number of women stayed and pamphlets were found there.	I may be confusing this with the other issue, but I also think we found a post office box at Athlone post office, if I am not mistaken.

MR KRUSE: That is correct.  What happened at the post office?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: The post box was searched.

MR KRUSE: How did you get access to the post office?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: By way of the Postmaster.

MR KRUSE: What was found in the post box?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: I really can't say what the contents of the documentation was.

MR KRUSE: Isn't it true it was literature too?  Literature, books?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: Possible.

MR KRUSE: Now, I want to know by you, if you say you have a specific task, was it justified in using your methods to get pamphlets?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: I think once we had the post office located, we were looking for intelligence in that post box.

MR KRUSE: The question is your methods you used, the level you went to to acquire UDF pamphlets and some literature, were those methods justified?

JEFFERY T BENZIEN: It is difficult to say justified.  There were so many banned organisations at that time, any literature or things to that effect would be passed on to other Units who could perhaps glean some or other information from it.

MR KRUSE: So you say anyone who had access to literature, which was not even banned literature, should have been tortured?

JUDGE WILSON: He has explained and I thought you had agreed that what they were looking for in the main, was the guns you had brought into the country.  They didn't torture you because of literature, they tortured you because of guns and as I understood your questioning a few minutes ago, you said you didn't find any of my guns, didn't you?

MR KRUSE: They never found any of the organisation's guns, because I never had, at that stage I had no guns on me.

CHAIRPERSON: Yes, well I mean the torturing wasn't done in order for him to get pamphlets from you, you know.

MR KRUSE: But if someone is arrested, with all due respect, and just based on how they operated, if the intelligence was wrong, they would subject any person or civil society to that things, based on the fact that they thought they had intelligence?
	It is very clear, I mean, they don't even know what my position was at that stage.  It was clear to me from the time of arrest.  That is why I could even bluff them most of the time, they were not clear, the information was not very clear.
	So any person of civil society could have been taken because they thought some informer gave them the information and therefore be subjected to the torture.  And this is my problem with this.