JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — Four former security policemen claim that they did not intend to kill anti-apartheid leader Steven Biko when they beat him in an interrogation two decades ago, their lawyer said Wednesday.
The four retired officers, plus a fifth who intends to confess, hope to win political amnesty from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in exchange for full confessions of their roles in one of the country's most infamous abuses under apartheid.
Attorney Francois Jacobus van der Merwe said the officers were seeking immunity on charges of assault and culpable homicide for the death in police custody of the charismatic black activist on Sept. 12, 1977.
"I would describe it as an interrogation gone wrong," Van der Merwe said. He added: "You could call it an accident."
But attorney George Bizos, who helped represent the Biko family at a government inquest after the death, disputed that version of events.
"It's not much different to the very fanciful account they gave at the inquest which was so far fetched that no reasonable man could believe them, except of course the magistrate in charge," Bizos said. "I don't know why they bothered."
Biko's death in police hands galvanized the nation and the world.
The eloquent advocate of black self-pride had emerged as leader of a generation of young black militants. His death made him a martyr of the cruelties of minority white rule and racial separation.
Biko's legacy today includes Cabinet ministers, provincial premiers, church leaders, labor officials and others who came of age politically in Biko's Black Consciousness Movement. Most of them later shifted allegiance to the more inclusive, nonracial philosophy of Nelson Mandela's African National Congress.
Mandela, now president, created the truth commission last year to expose the past in hopes of healing the nation's wounds. Van der Merwe said the former officers called him last year "in the spirit of reconciliation" and not because they feared prosecution.
The four officers applied for amnesty in December after the commission agreed to admit them to a special witness protection program, he said. Amnesty applications are not made public.
"I'm happy to say they're not beating their chests and saying, 'I'm proud of what I did,' " Van der Merwe said. "But you must remember that in the era this took place, [Biko] was an enemy of the government of the day. . . . At the time, they were fully convinced they were performing their duties within the law."
