August 5, 1999

AMNESTY DECISION - KHOTSO HOUSE BOMBING

Former Minister of Law and Order, Mr. Adrian Vlok and former Commissioner
of Police, General Johannes Van Der Merwe were part of a group that was
granted amnesty today for their involvement in the bombing of Khotso House
in 1988.

Also granted amnesty for the same offence are former senior and junior
security police officers, General Gerrit Erasmus, Willem Schoon, former
Commander of the C Unit at Vlakplaas Eugene De Kock, Wahl Du Toit, Paul
Erasmus, Douw Willemse, Charles Zeelie, Andries Van Heerden, Izak Bosch,
Jacob Kok, Larry Hanton, Nicholaas Vermeulen, Hendrik Van Niekerk Kotze,
George Hammond and Michael Bellingan.

Amnesty was granted to all applicants in respect of public violence and
malicious damage to property, the unlawful possession of arms, ammunition
and explosives for the purposes of bombing Khotso House.

They were also granted amnesty for defeating the ends of Justice, by inter
alia spreading misinformation about the possible involvement of Shirley
Gunn, in the explosion and any other offence directly or indirectly linked
to the explosion caused at Khotso House based on facts disclosed in
evidence before the Committee.

Evidence was led before the Committee that Minister Vlok, discussed the
plan to bomb Khotso House with General Van Der Merwe who was then head of
the Security Police.  They submitted a report to P.W. Botha, the then
State President and the matter was discussed by the Security Council.

Botha instructed Vlok to look into the matter in depth and take the
necessary steps to make the building unusable.  Schoon, the former
Commander of the Security Police in Pretoria instructed De Kock, the
Commander of Vlakplaas to take the necessary steps to carry out the
explosion.

After the explosion the Strategy Department of the Police then built a
theory on the circumstantial evidence and implicated Shirley Gunn as a
suspect responsible for the explosion.  In his evidence before the
Committee, Vlok apologised to Gunn for falsely implicating her in the
Khotso House bombing.

The Committee found that the applicants complied with the requirements of
the Act in that the offence is an act associated with a political
objective.  The Committee was of the opinion that they made full
disclosure of all relevant facts.

The objective was to render the building unusable and was directed at a
political opponent and was committed in executing of an order with the
approval of the Minister of Law and Order.

Inquiries :  Phila Ngqumba  082 458 8463