Last Timol witness testimony
FORMER SECURITY COP SHEDS NO LIGHT ON DEMISE OF ANTI-APARTHEID ACTIVIST When Seth Sons heard someone had fallen out of a window, he went straight to his office.
Aformer security police officer – the last witness to testify in the re-opened inquest into the death of Ahmed Timol 46 years ago – has shed no new light on the mystery that surrounds the anti -apartheid activist’s death.
Timol died on October 27, 1971, after falling out of a 10th storey window while in police custody at John Vorster Square. The police claimed he committed suicide, but Timol’s family later uncovered evidence pointing to him being tortured and possibly murdered.
Seth Sons, 80, a retired security police investigator, who worked on the ninth floor at John Vorster Square in 1971, testified that he had only learnt of Timol’s arrest after he was already in custody, but never saw him in person.
On a day in October 1971, he was asked to drive his commanding officer, Captain CJ Dirker, to Timol’s parental home. There were other officers there as well, but he stayed at the car while the house was being searched.
He said when they returned to the office at about 4pm that afternoon, a group of people were coming out of the lifts and he heard people saying someone had fallen out of the window.
He was not interested to hear who had fallen and did not have the stomach to look at the body of someone who had fallen from the 10th floor, so he went directly to his office and made no further enquiries because, he said, it had nothing to do with him.
Sons denied ever torturing anyone or ever witnessing anyone being assaulted or tortured or hearing anyone screaming in pain on the 10th floor.
Confronted with the statements of two former detainees who said Sons had forced one of them to stand naked after removing his glasses and had slapped the other one while interrogating him, Sons said he “could not remember” such incidents.
He pleaded ignorance about a wide range of torture techniques several former political detainees testified about, although he admitted that the “good cop, bad cop” technique was in general use.
He was aware that sleep deprivation was a method that was used, but would not comment that it was an accepted interrogation technique at the time.
He said the practice was not to leave detainees alone and Timol would not have been left alone with a pay clerk.
Final argument begins on October 24. –
Good cop, bad cop technique was in general use.