A WHITE South African policeman who boasted that he was apartheid's most ruthless killer was yesterday found guilty of five murders to become the most senior servant of white rule yet to face justice.
South Africa's most decorated policeman, Eugene de Kock (48), a former police colonel who commanded a ruthless hit squad unit that killed opponents of apartheid, was found guilty of killing five black men including Tiso Leballo, Ms Winnie Mandela's driver, in 1992.
His trial began shortly after President Nelson Mandela's election in April 1994 and revealed the depth of the ousted government's "Third Force" dirty tricks operation.
Pretoria Supreme Court Judge Willem van der Merwe, said he would pronounce his verdict on three further murder charges and on numerous other counts of fraud, theft and attempted murder today.
South Africa abolished the death penalty in June 1995, and the former colonel faces life imprisonment - commonly 25 years - on each murder charge. No date has been set for sentencing.
De Kock had earlier in the case admitted to involvement in the murder of four men in a vehicle ambush on March 26th, 1992, and to ordering the murder of Leballo a few days later. He had pleaded not guilty but even his own lawyers - before the trial was over - said the evidence against him was strong.
"De Kock's plea is not guilty but we conceded on the state's evidence that he might be guilty of at least five of the eight murder charges," the defence attorney, Mr Schalk Hugo, said.
De Kock was relaxed throughout the first day of the judgement, calmly taking copious notes of the judge's findings and laughing with his lawyers during the court breaks.
The trial has been one of the country's longest, with 92 witnesses called, 12,000 pages of evidence and 3,000 exhibits. It has provided a litany of the death and mayhem which formed part of the "old" South Africa. The accusations included massacres and random killings, attacks on township hostels and trains, ear bombings, torture, beatings and vendettas against fellow policemen.
Asked by lawyers at another [trial where he gave evidence, if he agreed he was the security forces' "most effective assassin", de Kock answered: "Yes, I would say that would be correct." That testimony helped convict three former colleagues in June of a bloody 1989 car bombing and won him indemnity from prosecution for that trial.
He has now applied to Archbishop Desmond Tutu's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, requesting that the amnesty it has the power to grant to those who committed human rights abuses but confessed to them.
Before de Kock became commander, the notorious Vlakplaas police unit was led by Mr Dirk Coetzee, who later exposed the government's "Third Force" death squads and joined the African National Congress.
Mr Coetzee, who faces a murder trial in December despite his amnesty application, has survived at least two attempts on his life one of which de Kock is accused of planning.
. South Africa's ruling African National Congress said yesterday that senior government ministers would meet next weekend to discuss the spiralling crime wave that has worried foreign investors. A two day meeting in Cape Town will be attended by the ministers of police, defence and justice, as well as representatives of the prisons and intelligence services.
Foreign investors have warned South Africa they will pull out of the country if nothing is done to halt violent crimes such as car hijackings and armed robbery in which business leaders and tourists are often targeted.