Timol might have been unconscious during his fall
Pathologist tells inquiry of disparity in wounds
Ahmed Timol’s corpse contained several injuries not incurred during his fatal fall from the 10th floor window of the apartheid era’s infamous John Vorster Square, the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria heard yesterday.
Liberation activist Timol died in 1971 while being interrogated by apartheid police. His death is the subject of an inquest at the high court in Pretoria, as his family refused to accept the conclusion by the former regime that he jumped to his death.
Judge Billy Mothle heard from Dr Shakeera Holland, an expert attached to Wits University and the state, that many injuries to Timol’s body were incurred days before he fell.
A seasoned forensic pathologist who had conducted autopsies on between 4 000 and 5 000 bodies, Holland based her testimony on a review of the postmortem report Dr NJ Scheepers conducted on behalf of the apartheid state in 1972.
In addition, she analysed the same photographs he used during the postmortem.
She concluded Timol had already suffered serious injuries before the fall.
In fact, Timol might have been unconscious during his fatal fall, Holland said.
“There are a number of wounds [on the body] that could not be attributed to a fall from a height,” she said.
Some of the sampled wounds were between four and six days old. The 1972 postmortem identified this. The wounds had scab formation, showing they were in the process of healing, Holland said. “Therefore, it cannot be that those wounds [were caused] during the fall from a height.”
The pre-fall wounds, likely to have been caused by blunt objects, had a common pattern.
“Based on my years of training and experience as a forensic pathologist, bruises enforced from height tend to be irregular and poorly defined.
“Most of the bruises that can be seen in the photographs are well-defined, patterned bruises and therefore not consistent with the fall from a height.”
Johannes Coetzee SC, representing Warrant Officer N Els, who was involved in Timol’s arrest, challenged Holland’s evidence. He described the photographs Holland analysed as “of a rather poor quality, faded black and white”.
Coetzee asked if she would say Scheepers was wrong in his findings that “there’s no serious injuries that he identified which were inconsistent with the fall of that height”.
But Holland stuck to her guns.
“From [Scheepers’s] report I’ve not changed or elaborated anything, I’ve just taken the injuries that were documented and I’ve interpreted them according to my experience and years of training.” she said.
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The current inquest into the late political activist Ahmed Timol at the Pretoria High Court has again raised questions surrounding the deaths in detention of freedom fighters, and the subsequent treatment of such cases by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).
Testifying at the inquest, former minister in the Presidency and SACP stalwart Essop Pahad said Timol would never have committed suicide as his religion, Islam, forbade it.
Timol died on October 27 1971 while in police detention at John Vorster Square, Johannesburg.
An inquest in 1972 labelled his death as suicide.
Timol’s family recently asked for the inquest to be reopened because new information had come to light.
His death is one of many brutal killings by the apartheid police, including that of Black Consciousness Movement founder Steve Biko, Dr Fabian Ribeiro, lawyer Griffiths Mxenge and ANC president-general Chief Albert Luthuli, that the apartheid state covered up and the TRC failed to appropriately deal with in blind pursuit of reconciliation.
It appears that this has stymied reconciliation since the commission sat back in 1996.
Biko died after suffering brain damage on September 12 1977 in a prison cell in Pretoria after being brutally tortured by the police.
James Kruger, minister of police at the time, claimed Biko died following a hunger strike.
In the 1960s, late 1970s and mid1980s, deaths in detention of political activists were explained away by the state as suicides or head injuries after “falling in the shower”.
Luthuli died on July 21 1967 after he was mysteriously struck by a train on a railway bridge while he was under house arrest in Groutville, Stanger, KwaZuluNatal.
The families of Biko, Ribeiro and Mxenge opposed amnesty applications by the policemen involved, but the Constitutional Court upheld the TRC legislation and pointed to the constitution’s call for national reconciliation and unity as reason for their decision.
The Timol inquest has not only poured salt on festering wounds, but has exposed the farce that was the TRC. For reconciliation to be real, the bitter truth needs to be brought into the open.