Apartheid Killers Granted Amnesty

Apartheid killer Eugene de Kock and a dozen former security officers won amnesty for the murder of eight black activists in 1985 by booby-trapped hand grenades.

But the decision by South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not lessen De Kock’s life sentence for crimes committed while in command of the notorious Vlakplaas death squad in the 1980s.

The commission has the power to grant those who make truthful disclosures amnesty for apartheid-era crimes. A panel spokesman said that De Kock and the others had made full disclosures and that the commission concluded that their actions had been politically motivated.