Walus must rot in jail – SACP poster
APPEAL: LAWYER SAYS CLIENT HAD REPEATEDLY, UNRESERVEDLY APOLOGISED
Emotions run high at parole hearing for Chris Hani’s killer.
After 25 years in jail, assassin Janusz is asking court for parole, deportation.
It was “ludicrous and unfair” to expect of SA Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani’s assassin Janusz Walus to become pro-communist before he could be released on parole, his counsel argued yesterday in the High Court in Pretoria.
Walus requested the high court to set aside Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha’s November 2017 decision to refuse him parole again and to order his release, subject to his deportation to Poland.
Masutha, the SACP, and Hani’s widow, Limpho, are opposing the application.
Emotions ran high in court with SACP members displaying a poster stating that the “unrepentant murderer must rot in jail”.
Walus, a Polish immigrant, has served 25 years of his life sentence for killing Hani in the driveway of his Boksburg home in 1993.
Walus and former Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis, who supplied the murder weapon, were initially sentenced to death, but their sentences were commuted to life imprisonment in 2000.
Derby-Lewis died of lung cancer in 2016, a year after being granted medical parole.
Roelof du Plessis, for Walus, argued that Masutha’s decision was irrational as he had ignored positive reports about his client’s rehabilitation and remorse and that the minister had elevated a few negative aspects to reasons why parole should be refused.
Du Plessis said Walus had repeatedly and unreservedly apologised to Hani’s family, the SACP, and to South Africans and therefore, there was no reason to conclude that his remorse was not sincere or that the 63-year-old Walus “might shoot communist leaders again” if he was released.
He added that Masutha had ignored the fact that Walus had completed life skills and anger management courses last year.
Marumo Moerane SC, counsel for Masutha, argued that the minister’s doubts about Walus’s remorse was reasonable as one should be extremely suspicious about remorse that was only expressed 20 years later.
Moerane said Walus still distanced himself from Hani’s murder by describing himself as a mere foot soldier and denying knowledge of any conspiracy to assassinate the SACP leader. “He clearly still harboured the same views about communism.”
The minister’s decision was lawful, rational and reasonable in all respects and could not be faulted on any grounds, he added.
Judge Selby Baqwa reserved judgment.