South African police lied about key details of the death in police detention 20 years ago of the Black Consciousness leader, Steve Biko, an ex-policeman admitted yesterday.
Maj Harold Snyman (68), one of five policemen seeking amnesty for Biko's death, told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, however, that police had not intended to kill Biko.
He claimed Biko had accidentally knocked his head against a wall in a scuffle during a police interrogation, and had sustained severe head injuries which later caused his death.
Maj Snyman said that while he had led the interrogation, he had merely observed the scuffle and had not personally taken part.
"I feel badly about these actions - that we acted in this manner against this person," he told the truth commission's amnesty committee in Afrikaans. "We never intended to kill him . . . I feel remorse and beg for forgiveness."
The subsequent cover-up, he said, had been to prevent embarrassment to security police and the apartheid regime; had the true facts been made public it could have affected foreign investment in South Africa.
Maj Snyman's version of the scuffle differed little from the one he and other police gave at a 1977 inquest into Biko's death.
Maj Snyman admitted, however, that he and other police had lied to the inquest about the date of the scuffle, giving it as September 7th, 1977, rather than September 6th. This had been done, he believed, to cover up the fact that medical doctors were not called until two days after the incident, on September 8th.
On September 11th, Dr Benjamin Tucker found Biko (31) lying in his cell, frothing at the mouth, hyper-ventilating and barely able to move his left arm. He was transferred to a prison hospital in Pretoria, 1,100 km away, naked and shackled. He died in a Pretoria police cell on September 12th, 1977.