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Content
A listing of transcripts of the dialogue and narrative of this section.
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Structure
The list provides the transcript, info about the text, and links to references contained in the text.
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Special Report
Transcripts for Section 2 of Episode 71
| Time | Summary | | | 01:44 | In the late 1980s a number of Umkhonto we Sizwe cells operating in the Western Cape were cracked and leading members detained. Once detained the men who had hunted them down, all members of the police terrorist tracking unit, had two goals. The first was to extract information about arms, contacts and routes as fast as possible. The second to compile a dossier of terrorism charges that would hold up in a court of law. They were successful; at the time the Western Cape had a spate of major terrorism trials, which resulted in lengthy prison sentences for the MK cadres. Jeffrey Benzien, William Liebenberg and Jakobus Griebenauw were some of the security men responsible for putting them behind bars. They now admit that their secret tool, the mechanism for their success, was torture. MK cadre Niclo Pedro was arrested in August of 1987 on his way to Lesotho and taken to this unit’s headquarters at Culemborg in Cape Town. | Full Transcript and References | | 02:58 | But when the interrogation started, Benzien and Nortje were present. They were the only other people in the room with me and when they started interrogating me the intimidation had already taken effect. This intimidation of me had already started when I was in this room and the security policeman came in and out to have a good look at me. When they were alone with me they took off all my clothes and there was a mesh wire in front of the window and they tied me up against this mesh wire and that meant that I could barely stand. And they started questioning me regarding several aspects. That is where I met Benzien for the first time. | Full Transcript and References | | 03:52 | Pedro had a letter with the names of his contacts in Lesotho. Benzien wanted those names, badly. // I was given instructions to carry a letter which I should not open until such time as I’d cross the Lesotho border and then I would find out who these people were and where I was supposed to meet them. And I followed these instructions; I didn’t open the letter. When I was arrested I did away with the letter. When they questioned me about this I answered them and I think to my regret I said to them that I’d eaten the letter. When I told them this Benzien told me that he wanted to know who these people were that I was supposed to meet in Lesotho. He then took me out of that room in the Culemborg building and took me to a different place, it was somewhere at the back of the building. I can recall that we went past some steps and we went around the back. It was almost an open plan type of room. There he told me that I should defecate, because he wanted to actually get this letter out ...more | Full Transcript | | 05:48 | You will know that he denied that he pushed a stick into his anus. | Full Transcript | | 05:54 | For the first time really a senior commanding officer took some responsibility for the bestial acts committed in the bowels of apartheid prisons. Retired Major-General Griebenauw who commanded the Western Cape Security Branch at the time admitted that torture, though not authorized, was tacitly approved. | Full Transcript | | 06:14 | I never gave any member an instruction to place a wet bag over anybody’s head or to torture him in any other way. I was however very much aware of the fact that members’ success could be ascribed to the use of unconventional questioning or interrogation methods. It would have been naïve of me to believe that they would extract information in any other way from a well trained terrorist. | Full Transcript | | 06:37 | But Griebenauw, who would not say whether he has applied for amnesty or not, denied that he had ever witnessed or participated in torture. He was then confronted with a statement by a former detainee, Shahieda Issel. // Mister Mostert indecently assaulted her, which you may or may not know about. Do you know about that? // No. // She then says that she then went into a room where she sat down and there was Mr. Mostert, Mr. Nel; Mr. Trollop. Did you know Mr. Trollop? // I knew him, he served under me. // And you. You were all together and you questioned her about her personal life. Do you remember that? // I cannot remember that at all. // She was in your presence and men under your command were assaulting her. // This has been alleged. // Why didn’t you stop them? // Because I did not see it happen, it did not happen in my presence. | Full Transcript | | 07:43 | Superintendant William Liebenberg has also applied for amnesty for the torture of the same group of detainees as Captain Benzien. He did not admit to much more than slapping, but as Benzien’s immediate superiour he admitted that he knew torture was happening. | Full Transcript | | 08:02 | I never told Benzien or anybody else in so many words to assault any of these mentioned people or to make use of the wet-bag method during interrogation. After the first incident during which Jacobs was subjected to the method by Benzien I was however aware of his modus operandi. As set out above, his unconventional actions had brought about the result which our unit was actually striving for and I didn’t oppose it. // What methods did you know about that were used by your team? // For the most part we used the good boy, bad boy interrogation method. One man would be aggressive, and that was my role, in the case of these four people. Then there would also be somebody else, another policeman who tried to play the part of the nice guy and in that way try to obtain the information. // OK so we know there is a good boy and a bad boy, but we’d like to know what makes the bad boy bad. What does he do? What did your bad boys do as far as you knew? // I could then say that it would be ...more | Full Transcript |
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