Last witness takes the stand

THURSDAY AUGUST 17 2017 CLOSING arguments in the reopened inquest into the death of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol will be heard on August 24, after the last witness took the stand yesterday.

Pretoria High Court Judge Billy Mothle was told by the advocate appearing for the Timol family, Howard Varney, that they were still considering calling another former security police agent to the stand, to clear up certain issues.

Advocate Torie Pretorius, acting for the National Prosecuting Authority, said that “it would just muddle the issues” if that witness was called.

Varney, however, said he would consult the rest of his legal team before making a final decision.

Judge Mothle, however, postponed the matter for final arguments and stressed again that the matter had to come to finality.

Another former security agent, Seth Sons, now 80, who worked as an investigator at the time of Timol’s death in 1971, was the last witness to take the stand.

Sons said he had never witnesses anyone being tortured at the John Vorster Square building and never heard from his colleagues that they had tortured detainees.

He claimed that he read about possible tortures in the newspapers.

This is exactly the answer given by former security agents Jan Rodrigues and Neville Els when they were asked about torture.

However, Varney produced affidavits by two detainees during the 1980s, who claimed they had endured assault at the hands of Sons during interrogations.

The one claimed Sons took away his spectacles and made him stand naked in the interrogation room.

The other claimed he was hit on the head.

Sons’s answer to both allegations remained the same: “I cannot remember, Your Honour.”

When grilled on this issue, he told the judge that his mind was “a bit rusty due to age”.

According to Sons he was not privileged to a lot of information in those days, as the police security agents did not fully trust the “non-white members of the branch”.