NPA slammed for not prosecuting alleged 'torturers'

The NPA has been criticised for its decision not to prosecute two former apartheid police security branch members who allegedly tortured many political detainees in the 1970s, some of whom died at their hands. According to a report in The Citizen, the Foundation for Human Rights (FHR) has asked for the prosecution of former police officer Seth Sons, who was responsible for the brutal torture of several detainees. The FHR cited records that showed Sons and his colleague Neville Els were in the room when anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol was murdered in detention in 1971. In the case of Neville Els, who was a warrant officer at the time, police records in the Ahmed Timol Inquest showed that he was one of the police interrogators on duty the night that Timol’s fellow detainee Kantilal Naik was tortured using the ‘helicopter method’. The foundation said neither Sons nor Els had ever been investigated by the NPA for their roles as alleged torturers and in aiding and abetting apartheid killings and torture. ‘Any hope that the new leadership at the NPA would do so has been dashed by the recent decision of NPA Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) for North Gauteng not to take action against Seth Sons and Neville Els,’ said the FHR. The foundation said the DPP’s argument that age is an issue that precludes the NPA from indicting these two alleged perpetrators is a ‘morally revolting travesty of justice’.

Full report in The Witness