A COURT has convicted nine members of the neo Nazi AWB organisation of murder after a string of bombings on the eve of South Africa's first multiracial elections.
Five other defendants were found guilty of lesser charges, including possession of explosives, and four were acquitted. Four of the men, including three of those convicted of murder, are still at large having escaped from a prison near Johannesburg earlier this month.
They will be sentenced in absentia on Monday, along with the 10 men who remain in custody. Since South Africa has abolished the death penalty last year the maximum sentence they face is life imprisonment.
The AWB bombings were carried out in late April 1994 in an attempt to disrupt the transition to majority rule in South Africa after 40 forty years of apartheid. At least 20 people were killed in the attacks in central Johannesburg, Johannesburg airport and neighbouring towns. Among the victims was the Irish South African ANC activist, Ms Susan Keane, who died when her car was caught in a blast near her party's headquarters.
Ms Keane was the only daughter of Irish parents, John and Joan Keane, who were among those present in the court when Judge H. C. Fleming gave his verdict. Also present was the AWB leader, Mr Eugene TerreBlanche, and a large crowd of supporters clad in the AWB's khaki paramilitary uniform. Mistaking Mrs Keane for one of his supporters, Mr TerreBlanche greeted her on the way into court. "Rot in hell," she replied.
The convicted men were among 30 AWB activists arrested in a swoop which brought the bombing campaign to an abrupt end. Informers later told the court that the accused were among a group of AWB supporters who assembled on a farm to prepare a terror campaign to destabilise the country. Charges against a number of the men were dropped when it was ruled that the laws they were framed under did not comply with South Africa's interim constitution.
Mr TerreBlanche later refused to comment on the verdicts. In the past he has repeatedly called on the government to grant the accused amnesty, on the grounds that they had committed their offences for political reasons.
Mr Nelson Mandela's government had refused to comply, however, since the offences were occurred after the December 1993 cut off date for amnesty for political offences. South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Act states that amnesty cannot be granted in respect of offences committed after the white National Party and mainly black ANC had agreed on the framework for the transition to full democracy.