"S. Africa death squad leader seeks parole" by Christopher Torchia | Associated Press, February 28, 2014
JOHANNESBURG — Does forgiveness lead to a better society? Or are some crimes so atrocious that the perpetrators should not be forgiven?
Anyone who reads this blog knows I'm of the latter persuasion, especially regarding today's mass-murdering war criminals.
South Africa faced these difficult questions after apartheid ended two decades ago, and confronts them again as the government considers parole this year for a notorious death squad leader who worked for the white racist government.
Related: Batch of Obituaries
They ARE looking a lot like Israel these days.
Eugene de Kock, head of a covert police unit that tortured and killed dozens of antiapartheid militants, was arrested in 1994, confessed to crimes, and was sentenced in 1996 to two life terms plus another 212 years. After 20 years in jail, he said he is the only member of the former police force serving time for crimes committed on behalf of South Africa’s old order and says he acted on instructions from leaders who were never punished.
‘‘Not one of the previous generals, or ministers who were in Cabinet up to 1990, have been prosecuted at all,’’ he said in an affidavit signed in January in his parole application.
Julian Knight, de Kock’s lawyer, said he is pushing for a parole decision next month. He speculated that the government might delay the decision, timing it to celebrations later this year of South Africa’s 20th anniversary of democracy, or until after May elections to minimize ‘‘any negative fallout.’’
Related: South Africa's New Apartheid
De Kock’s case revives debate about South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which recommended amnesty to some who recounted wrongdoing during apartheid and showed remorse. The goal was to promote reconciliation by allowing the cruelties of the past to be examined, for victims to seek closure.
It's the right thing to do because all warring societies do it when the war is over.
Forgive, but never forget.
De Kock, now 65, sought parole last year, but was rejected.
Some South Africans, including the family of slain activist Steve Biko, believe that more apartheid-era enforcers should have been punished. Lobbying for prosecutions continues. A group that represents 85,000 victims of apartheid says a state plan to pay reparations is inadequate and far behind schedule.
Who stole the money?
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Also see: South Africa's O.J.
"Oscar Pistorius fired guns in public in the months before he killed his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp — once out of a car sunroof on a road in 2012 and once in a crowded restaurant in 2013, onetime friend Darren Fresco said at the athlete’s murder trial Tuesday in Pretoria, drawing an aggressive effort from the chief defense lawyer to pick holes in his testimony. Fresco’s description of how Pistorius once berated a police officer in 2012 fit the prosecution’s attempts to cast the double-amputee athlete as prone to flashes of anger and blinded by an inflated sense of entitlement at a time when his public image was that of a clean-cut poster boy for overcoming adversity. Judge Thokozile Masipa cautioned Fresco, who was also a friend of Steenkamp, that some questions could incriminate him for offenses including discharge of a firearm in a built-up area, negligent damage to property, and reckless endangerment. She said he would not be prosecuted if he answered the questions truthfully."
