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Koevoet

Explanation
a police counter-insurgency unit set up in South West Africa in 1979 by members of the SAP Security Branch. It comprised recruits mostly from the local population who were trained as a mobile unit to gather intelligence, track guerrillas and kill them. Koevoet (Afrikaans for 'crowbar') soon gained a reputation for brutality, largely because of its methods of interrogating and torturing local people and for its heavy-handed presence in the operational areas. In the early to mid-1980s, at the height of its war with SWAPO, Koevoet claimed a kill rate of around 300 to 500 people a year, for which its members were paid a bounty per corpse.

... country for military training; the April 1990 murder of Sam Chan and his family in Botswana; and a 1991 joint Vlakplaas operation that employed ex-Koevoet soldiers to attack and kill four alleged gun smugglers. The episode concludes with a segment on the former security policemen?s psychological ...
This episode investigates compulsory military conscription, the war South Africa fought in Angola, and post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in the documentary Borderliners: The Scars of War that includes interviews with former Koevoet soldiers, army medics and an international expert on PTSD.
The dramatic successes of the police anti-terrorist unit in Namibia, codenamed ‘Koevoet’ led the South African Security Police to borrow some of their methods. Among Koevoet’s most efficient killers were SWAPO guerrillas who were caught and compromised, then forced to fight their own ...
... for them to flatten the huts with a caspir and that we would open fire at the same time. It’s the overkill situation that was typically Koevoet. We would shoot as much concentrated fire into a space as possible. We didn’t know how many people might be in there with them, what they ...
... for them to flatten the huts with a casper and that we would open fire at the same time. It’s the overkill situation that was typically Koevoet. We would shoot as much as concentrated fire into a space as possible. We didn’t know how many people might be in there with them, what ...
I just destroyed the people around me, my friends my family. And I think it’s enough now.
The Commission sat in noisy cities and quiet dorpies. They sat in big imposing town halls and dingy schools and churches, from Messina in the north to Cape Town in the south and from everywhere the victims came. Some were dignified, silver haired elders, others impassioned young lions. Sometimes ...
I immediately started applying bandages, putting up a drip. At the same time John Deagon was interrogating him because as a political commissar he would have been carrying a hand gun. His hand gun couldn’t be found and I guess that John wanted it for his personal collection. While putting up a ...
During 1991 Vlakplaas investigated gun running from Mozambique to ANC and PAC units in the country. A plan to ambush and arrest four gun smugglers turned into a shooting spree. The four men were killed in cold blood, but the official story was that they were killed in self defence.
I immediately started applying bandages, putting up a drip. At the same time John Deagon was interrogating him because as a political commissar he would have been carrying a hand gun. His hand gun couldn’t be found and I guess that John wanted it for his personal collection. While putting up a ...
to eliminate these people by shooting them. During this discussion it was decided that it would create a problem if it was mentioned that the Ovambo Koevoet members shot the smugglers, because at that stage there were various rumours that the security police were involved in so-called third force ...
... not a bunch of ex soldiers getting together having a braaivleis and swopping bush stories. What it is, is SWAPO, ANC, APLA, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Koevoet, Recces, all the units, every single unit, everybody whoever was trained in any way militarily getting together and just making some kind of ...
... had been, until 18 months ago involved in the manufacture of guns on the East Rand and in Silverton, Pretoria. Guns had also been received from Koevoet in Namibia and from ...
... not a bunch of ex soldiers getting together having a braaivleis and swopping bush stories. What it is, is SWAPO, ANC, APLA, Umkhonto we Sizwe, Koevoet, Recces, all the units, every single unit, everybody whoever was trained in any way militarily getting together and just making some kind of ...
... they attacked. The sophisticated night sight for a RP7 rocket launcher they displayed to the media had in fact been De Kock’s farewell gift from Koevoet. And the two hand grenades they produced were also on loan from the Vlakplaas ...
On Friday Eugene de Kock testified. He was not involved in the killing but heard about it from his former Koevoet colleague, Sakkie van Zyl. Van Zyl told De Kock a tale that differs from the version that he put before the Amnesty Committee.
... debt, the issue of assets that were being claimed by the former South African government, including Walvis Bay. The repatriation of Namibian Koevoet and SWATF members from South Africa to Namibia and the extradition of Lubowski’s murder suspects. // There is the question of extradition ...
Sakkie van Zyl, former member of Koevoet and then a captain said he was also given details on how the attack should be carried out. // Will you please tell about that? // Col Van Rensburg proposed or gave order that the attack should appear as if it was a vigilante or AZAPO attack, in other words ...
 
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