Cape Town - A retired police officer Johannes Burger, who received a medal for combating terrorism among other commendations while serving the apartheid police, denied any knowledge of torture activities at the Security Branch.
Burger, the last surviving police officer from the period of Imam Abdullah Haron’s detention, was testifying through a translator on behalf of the State at the reopened inquest into the 1969 death in police custody of the anti-apartheid Struggle activist.
Burger, who was on duty when Imam Haron’s body was found in his cell, was accused of being evasive during cross-examination by the Haron family’s lawyer Howard Varney, when he was questioned about the relationship between the uniform branch of the police and the Security Branch.
Excerpts of the exchange between Burger and Varney went as follows:
Varney: Were you aware of the Security Branch (SB) as a feared branch of the police?
Burger: I can’t answer that. I had nothing to do with them.
Varney: So you were completely ignorant of the Security Branch
Burger: I had nothing to do with them, the only time I did was when I made the statement (to them about how I found the body).
Varney: During the late 1960s it was common knowledge that that branch of the police was feared. I must put it to you that your answers are coming across as evasive.
Are you seriously saying it is only when you were shown pictures (of the Imam’s body in 2020) that you found out what the SB did to detainees?
Burger: I can’t speak to the question of detainees, only the Imam.
At this point Judge Daniel Thulare interjected to clarify that 2020 was the first time that Burger knew of torture allegations against the Security Branch, to which Burger replied in the affirmative.
Burger said before he saw the pictures he had no idea how the Security Branch treated people, he thought their job was only to question their prisoners.
Earlier in the proceedings, veteran SACP activist and former political detainee Jeremy Cronin testified about his experiences in detention between 1976 and 1983, and about his interactions with one of the security branch officers involved in the Imam Haron case, Johannes “Spyker” van Wyk.
Cronin, who had been called by Varney on behalf of the Haron family, said when he was interrogated by Van Wyk, the feared security branch policeman had been wearing what he described as a “a butcher’s apron” covered in red spots.
He said he was never sure if this was actual blood or just theatrics to intimidate him as van Wyk and another officer whose name he couldn’t recall played “bad, bad cop and less bad cop” during his interrogation.
Cronin, who is reported to have once described Van Wyk as a “psychopath of note”, said during his 1976 interrogation the “less bad cop” told him to co-operate or else what had happened to Haron would happen to him. The inquest continues.
