Police Brutality South Africa

Six white police officers accused of setting dogs on black prisoners and beating them are to remain in custody, a judge ordered Thursday. Five of the six will remain in detention until Nov. 17, when they will be eligible to apply for bail. One, Sgt. Jacobus Smith, will be allowed to enter a hospital because he is infected with a rare virus, the South African Press Assn. reported.

Four white police officers received prison terms of four to five years Thursday for setting their dogs on three black Mozambican immigrants in an animal training exercise described by a high court judge as cowardly, brutal and cruel. "They completely disregarded the humanity of the three victims," Judge Willie van der Merwe said as he passed sentence. He accused the South African officers of abusing their authority while regarding the incident as a joke.

Eight more South African police officers face suspension in connection with the videotaped beating of suspected thieves, a spokesman said. The officers will be suspended Monday, according to police spokesman Chris Wilken. He said some of the eight officers are black, although he did not know the exact number. Six white officers had already been suspended in the case, a seeming throwback to the days of apartheid-era police brutality. The suspects are black or of mixed race.

Six South African police officers arrested for allegedly setting dogs on three black men in a videotaped 1998 attack were granted bail. Magistrate Alan Cohan, who set bail at $260 each, said prosecutors had not proven that the officers' lives would be in danger if they received bail or that there would be public violence if they were released. He ordered the accused not to interfere with any of the witnesses in the case.

Calling political suppression "irrevocably a thing of the past," President Frederik W. de Klerk announced plans Thursday to scrap most of South Africa's notorious Internal Security Act, which gives police broad powers to detain and silence anti-apartheid activists. "The suppression of the right of any party to state its case democratically in an orderly manner is not acceptable to the government," De Klerk told Parliament in Cape Town.

Six white officers were suspended amid an inquiry on a videotape showing them punching and kicking suspected thieves, one of whom later died. In a seeming throwback to South Africa's apartheid-era police violence, the officers are seen beating two suspects--who appeared to be black or mixed-race--and then setting a German shepherd on them. Officers can be heard laughing on the tape. The violence was captured by a camerawoman for the British Broadcasting Corp., which broadcast the tape.

A South African prosecutor said he is considering whether to bring murder charges against police in the 1977 beating death of anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission rejected amnesty for three officers who interrogated Biko. Another has since died, and a fifth was denied amnesty in December. The officers' prosecution would likely reignite passions about a man who became synonymous with resistance to apartheid.

African National Congress leader Nelson Mandela lashed out at white politicians and police Thursday and appealed for black unity to end violence that has killed more than 130 blacks this week. In a speech that was unusually militant, Mandela accused most whites in the government and security forces of caring nothing for blacks. "It's as if flies have died," he said of the white government's reaction to the deaths of blacks in township violence.

Police riot investigator Fente Rampete was on duty at 9 a.m. on a recent Monday, carrying his 9-millimeter Beretta automatic pistol and reeking of alcohol. "Get away from there or I'll arrest you!" Rampete snarled at two black men talking with suspects in the dark holding cells beneath the courthouse here. The visitors walked quickly away.

Six South African police officers arrested for allegedly setting dogs on three black men in a videotaped 1998 attack were granted bail. Magistrate Alan Cohan, who set bail at $260 each, said prosecutors had not proven that the officers' lives would be in danger if they received bail or that there would be public violence if they were released. He ordered the accused not to interfere with any of the witnesses in the case.

Six white police officers accused of setting dogs on black prisoners and beating them are to remain in custody, a judge ordered Thursday. Five of the six will remain in detention until Nov. 17, when they will be eligible to apply for bail. One, Sgt. Jacobus Smith, will be allowed to enter a hospital because he is infected with a rare virus, the South African Press Assn. reported.

Eight more South African police officers face suspension in connection with the videotaped beating of suspected thieves, a spokesman said. The officers will be suspended Monday, according to police spokesman Chris Wilken. He said some of the eight officers are black, although he did not know the exact number. Six white officers had already been suspended in the case, a seeming throwback to the days of apartheid-era police brutality. The suspects are black or of mixed race.

Six white officers were suspended amid an inquiry on a videotape showing them punching and kicking suspected thieves, one of whom later died. In a seeming throwback to South Africa's apartheid-era police violence, the officers are seen beating two suspects--who appeared to be black or mixed-race--and then setting a German shepherd on them. Officers can be heard laughing on the tape. The violence was captured by a camerawoman for the British Broadcasting Corp., which broadcast the tape.

A South African prosecutor said he is considering whether to bring murder charges against police in the 1977 beating death of anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission rejected amnesty for three officers who interrogated Biko. Another has since died, and a fifth was denied amnesty in December. The officers' prosecution would likely reignite passions about a man who became synonymous with resistance to apartheid.

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.

South Africa's white minority former government approved plans to step up the killing of anti-apartheid demonstrators in a bid to crush black revolt 20 years ago, according to newly released Cabinet minutes. Then-Minister of Justice and Police Jimmy Kruger recommended the policy at a Cabinet meeting in August 1976, the director of the state archive, Marie Olivier, said Friday. The black student riots broke out in Soweto township in June 1976 and rapidly spread to most other parts of the country.

This country's most prominent independent pathologist, a strong supporter of President Frederik W. de Klerk, charged Sunday that the South African police are "totally out of control" and are killing at least one black suspect a week. "The killing goes on and on and on," said Dr. Jonathan Gluckman, who said he has examined the bodies of about 200 victims of police torture in the past few years. "I don't know how to stop it. I don't think the government knows how to stop it."

A former police officer who headed apartheid's most notorious death squad--a state-sanctioned unit that carried out grisly bombings, assassinations and other atrocities--was convicted Monday on five counts of murder. Former police Col. Eugene de Kock, a key figure in the "dirty war" waged by the white minority regime against black liberation forces, is the first senior security officer to be convicted of apartheid-related offenses since the nation's first all-race elections in April 1994.

A former police officer who headed apartheid's most notorious death squad--a state-sanctioned unit that carried out grisly bombings, assassinations and other atrocities--was convicted Monday on five counts of murder. Former police Col. Eugene de Kock, a key figure in the "dirty war" waged by the white minority regime against black liberation forces, is the first senior security officer to be convicted of apartheid-related offenses since the nation's first all-race elections in April 1994.

In the four months since this nation's Truth and Reconciliation Commission began investigating the apartheid era, hundreds of victims and survivors have described in agonizing detail how successive white, racist governments used murder, torture and other atrocities to oppress the black majority and keep a tight grip on power. Many pleaded, often in tears, simply for an explanation as to who had ordered such gruesome abuses, and why. On Wednesday, the white former president, Frederik W.