Apartheid death gets fresh investigation after 45 years

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The story by the apartheid police was an unlikely one. They claimed that the young anti-apartheid activist had deliberately leaped to his death from the 10th floor of a notorious police station – and that his leap was provoked by "Communist Party doctrine" and a mysterious comrade called "Mr. X."

As implausible as it sounded, the police version of Ahmed Timol's death was swiftly accepted by a South African judge and the case was slammed shut. But now, 45 years later, a new inquest is hearing fresh evidence that points the finger at the police themselves.

The alleged suicide of Mr. Timol, a 29-year-old underground operative for banned anti-apartheid organizations, was just one of the dozens of suspicious deaths of activists in police detention in the apartheid era. The most infamous was the brutal death of Steve Biko, killed by police interrogators, but many other police-custody deaths were among the hundreds of apartheid atrocities that have never led to prosecutions.

After decades of tireless effort by Mr. Timol's family, South African prosecutors ruled last year that there was sufficient evidence to reopen the inquest into his death.

"We, as South Africans, are about to enter a door that will rekindle painful memories," Judge Billy Mothle told the opening day of the inquest on Monday.

That door will lead to a journey "which will cause all of us to confront the sordid part of our history," the judge said. "That door will only close once the truth is revealed."

The inquest is being held in Johannesburg's High Court, less than two kilometres from the police station where Mr. Timol plunged to his death. In the apartheid era, it was known as John Vorster Square, the most feared of all South African police stations.

Just three days after Mr. Timol's arrest in 1971, a fellow detainee named Salim Essop caught a glimpse of him on the 10th floor of John Vorster Square. His face was covered in a hood and he was too weak to walk, Mr. Essop told the inquest on Monday. Two policemen were holding Mr. Timol and dragging him along, Mr. Essop said.

His testimony on Monday was in sharp contrast to the version presented at the 1972 inquest, where police witnesses claimed Mr. Timol had been healthy enough to dash across a room, open a closed window, hoist himself up to the window and dive out.

Mr. Essop was a close friend of Mr. Timol in the anti-apartheid underground, where they distributed leaflets for the banned African National Congress and South African Communist Party. They were arrested together on Oct. 22, 1971, and taken separately to John Vorster Square for interrogation.

Mr. Essop testified that he was savagely tortured for several days at the police station. The police have admitted that they had extensively interrogated Mr. Timol in the same building at the same time, and injuries found on his body suggested that he, too, had been beaten before his death.

If the police treatment of the two men was similar, Mr. Timol would have suffered horrifically. Mr. Essop told the inquest that he endured "excruciating" pain from a series of torture methods, including electric shocks. He was punched and kicked repeatedly, and then was nearly suffocated with a plastic bag tied tightly around his head. "I think the idea was to break me completely," he said.

At one point, he was sent to a bathroom to wash away his own blood from his wounds. He caught sight of himself in a mirror. "I'm looking at a ghost-like character, and it's me," he said.

Most of the two dozen police officers involved in the Timol case have died in the past 45 years, but three are still alive, according to an investigator who testified to the inquest on Monday.

Crucially, one of police witnesses who is still alive – and could be subpoenaed to testify – was among the last to see Mr. Timol before his death. The witness, former police sergeant Joao Rodrigues, was thought to have died, but the investigator found him and interviewed him this month.

Howard Varney, a lawyer for the Timol family, said the police version of the death was "a clumsy web of lies" to cover up the truth. The judge in the 1972 inquest had "acted disgracefully" by "averting his eyes from the truth," Mr. Varney told the inquest on Monday.

He criticized the current South African government for its failure to bring justice and reparations to apartheid victims. "South Africa has largely abandoned the Timol family and so many families of victims of apartheid atrocities," he told the inquest. "Why did the Timol family have to move heaven and Earth to get this inquest off the ground?"

Mr. Timol's nephew, Imtiaz Cajee, said he is "completely overwhelmed" that the inquest is under way at last. "I'm struggling to absorb that it's finally happening, 45 years after the original inquest," he told The Globe and Mail on Monday.

He said the authorities had wasted earlier opportunities to pursue the case when most of the police witnesses were still alive. The potential new evidence from the former police sergeant, Mr. Rodrigues, could now be crucial to the case, he said.