Cape Town - Retired police officer Johannes Burger on Tuesday insisted on standing by the evidence he gave at the original 1970 inquest into the death in police custody of anti-apartheid struggle activist Imam Abdullah Haron.
This despite Judge Daniel Thulare assuring him he had no reason to fear telling the truth all these years later.
Burger, the last surviving police officer from the period of the Imam’s detention, was testifying for a second day at the reopened inquest into Imam Haron’s death.
The judge was questioning Burger about his evidence at the reopened inquest.
This after the family’s advocate, Howard Varney, told Burger that when making his submissions he would say that Burger was aware of the abuse of political detainees by the apartheid police Security Branch in the last two weeks of Haron’s life.
Burger testified that Imam Haron had walked slowly around the police station exercise yard on the eve of his death, despite evidence by two pathologists that his injuries from torture were so severe he would hardly have been able to walk.
Judge Thulare asked Burger whether his recollection was of a healthy man or, as the pathologists had testified, a man having difficulty breathing and walking.
Burger responded: “I saw a sick man. That’s all I can say.”
Varney accused him of seeing Imam Haron as “a subversive and a terrorist not worthy of compassion.”
But all Burger said in response was: “Those are harsh words, but I stand by my testimony.”
When Varney pushed and accused Burger and his colleagues of being negligent, Burger conceded the point but said he feared that as he was the only one of his colleagues left alive, he would have to bear the burden for all their wrongs whether he was involved or not.
At At the start of proceedings, the court adjourned for 15 minutes to give Burger a chance to reread his 2020 statement after it emerged he hadn’t been given the opportunity to do so by the State, on whose behalf he is testifying.
Burger was followed into the witness stand by two witnesses testifying at the behest of the Haron family.
The first was clinical psychologist Diane Sandler, whose research in the 1980s resulted in a book, Detention and Torture in South Africa, which detailed the experiences in detention of over 2 000 detainees.
Sandler testified that a number of people had named one of the Security Branch police officers involved in the Imam Haron case, Johannes “Spyker” van Wyk, as their torturer.
The third witness for the day was former Robben Island prisoner and Security Branch detention victim Robert Wilcox, who also spoke about being tortured by Van Wyk.
