Timol family wants clerk on murder rap

The family of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol wants the police clerk who last saw him alive charged.

Anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol’s family wants the police clerk who last saw him alive charged with perjury and possibly even murder.

This emerged during statements made to former security police clerk, Jan Rodrigues, 78, by advocate Howard Varney, who is representing Timol’s family, in the reopened inquest into his death in police detention 46 years ago.

Varney put it to Rodrigues that his version of events, which are that Timol got a fright on hearing that three of his compatriots had been arrested, that he had not been injured and that he had suddenly jumped up and dived through a 10th-floor window at John Vorster Square police station, was a fabrication by the security police to hide Timol’s assault, torture and murder.

He also put it to Rodrigues that if his story had any credibility, he would have been able to grab Timol before he jumped. He pointed out that Timol barely knew two of the men whose arrests supposedly caused him such fear that he jumped and that those arrests only happened a month later.

Varney said they would argue that Rodrigues should be charged with perjury, being an accessory after the fact to murder or, alternatively, murder.

Rodrigues replied: agree. I’m innocent.”

Varney and Judge Billy Mothle both confronted Rodrigues with the medical evidence in the original autopsy report, as well two forensic pathologists’ evidence, that Timol had numerous injuries which had not been caused by his fall. Both put it to him that those injuries would have been visible and that Timol would not have been able to walk with a dislocated ankle, let alone run to a window and dive out of it.

Both questioned why Rodrigues, “I don’t a lowly clerk, would have received a commendation from the national police commissioner for exemplary work shortly before the first inquest found that Timol had committed suicide. Roderigues insisted he never received the letter of commendation and only found out about it recently.

Mothle put it to the witness that his evidence did not accord with either the expert evidence or the evidence of others detained with Timol, who said they were severely tortured. But he replied that he was telling the whole truth.

I don’t agree. I’m innocent Jan Rodrigues Former security police clerk