From: "FRANCO BARCHIESI" <029FRB-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za> Date: Fri, 28 Feb 1997 16:20:21 GMT + 2:00 Subject: Who Killed Chris Hani? Dear comrades, Here is the information requested by Adam and JohnH on recent developments on the investigation on Chris Hani's murder. >From the "Mail & Guardian" (Johannesburg), January 31 - February 6, 1997: "NEW EVIDENCE IN HANI DEATH PLOT" by Stefaans Brummer and Hazel Friedman "Secret Military Intelligence reports warning of Chris Hani's impending assassination have raised the startling possibility of a wider plot to kill the popular South African communist party leader before the 1994 elections. The Mail & Guardian is in possession of two documents, at least one wchih appears certain to have been delivered to the old South African Defence Force's Department of Military Intelligence (MI) before the assassination. Julie Wilken, long-time girlfriend of MI agent Eugene Riley , says in a sworn statement that she typed the documents, which Riley had composed for his MI handlers (...). Riley died of a single gunshot wound to his head on January 31, 1994. His death remains a mistery. The document raised the question hy MI, pre-warned, had done nothing to prevent Hani's death (...). Key to the mistery is an apparent ANC-MI double agent codenamed "Ramon" - described in the document as the source of the information on the impending assassination. Wilken names "Ramon" as Mohammed Amin Laher, whom the M&G knows independently to have co- operated with Riley (...). Wilken says in her affidavit: "I found out Laher was a member of the ANC's Department of Intelligence and Security (DIS) when I typed a number of reports over a period of several months - reposrt which Riley made to his handler at MI after debriefing Laher... The reports contained sensitive information on ANC matters". About two weeks before Hani's assassination, Laher started giving Riley information on an assassination attempt that would be launched against an unnamed "prominent political figure". In follow-up meetings, Laher gave more detailed information, including that Hani would be the target. Wilken states she was present at some of the earlier meetings. Her affidavit says she recognizes the two documents in M&G's possession (...) as the true copies of the documents she typed. The first document wavers between whether it would be an actual assassination or an attempt to "frighten" Hani. The later document confirms the intent to kill - and even talks of a "Polish member of the 'strike unit'" (...). A number of weeks after Riley's own death, Laher told her the plot to kill Hani had come from a small group within the DIS which had found out that the rightwingers were planning the assassination already. Laher told her the DIS members' role had been to "facilitate" the rightwing attempt and mentioned "something about" Hani's bodyguards (who were absent at the time of the assassination) (...). Among a number of explanations for the contents of the reports is that it was a conscious disinformation attempt against the ANC by "Ramon". But the question remains how he could have had foreknowledge of the assassination, which still indicates at least acquiescence on the part of the agency - ANC or the government - where he gleaned his information. But (...) there are some in the ANC who believe ANC members had something to do with Hani's assassination. Winnie Madikizela-Mandela was reported in the London "Sunday Times", a week after the assassination, to have told confidants she believed moderate ANC leaders had "conspired" with the National Party government to eliminate Hani. the report said: "according to her, details of Hani's movements, including critical information about when his bodyguards would be absent, were passed to government security agents, who in turn made this known to Waluz [Hani's killer, FB]". (...) Indications in support of this thesis include: - Both MI documents state that the planned assassination would be moved from April 11 to April 10 "since no access could be obtained to Hani on 1993/04/11" (...). A previously unpublished fact is that Hani had secretely spent the final hours of his last night at a Johannesburg hotel. He might have had reason to send his bodyguards home because of the clandestine nature of the hotel visit. Few people would have had that intimate a knowledge of Hani's movements to feed to Waluz. (...) - The first MI document says "Ramon" claims Hani's "own agenda has become a big headache for the MK [Umkhonto we Sizwe, ANC's armed structure, FB]/DIS hierarchy". This may well be true. Hani, never one to be dictated to, first came into conflict with his ANC seniors as far back as the ANC's 1969 Morogoro conference, when he was suspended for his militant approach. And in 1991, when the ANC had its first National Executive Committee leadership elections in South Africa, Hani's immense popularity led him to challenge Thabo Mbeki [currently SA's vice-president and Mandela's designated successor, FB] for the party's deputy presidency. Many in the ANC disapproved as the ANC at the time wanted to project a more moderate image. After intense behind-the-scenes jockeying, both Hani and Mbeki agreed to stand down in favour of Walter Sisulu as compromise candidate. A few months before his death, Hani said in a foreign newspaper interview that he was thinking of starting an outside communist/labour organisation to act as a check on the ANC in the government (...)". A weel later, Mohammed Amin Laher released an interview to the "Mail & Guardian" saying that he was not "Ramon", but that the documents involving him in this whole story had a "shred of truth". He then said that Hani's assassination was a "conspiracy on both sides of the spectrum", and that ANC security members were involved in the plot to kill Hani. Laher confirmed to have been associated with Riley in the past. Associated with Riley was also Ricky Nkondo, former ANC Dept. of Intelligence and Security member, and now head of division in the National Intelligence Agency (NIA: incidentally the same NIA whose agents have been caught by comrades in identifying student and staff activists at universities such as here at Wits, Pretoria, and Durban-Westville) in the office of the Deputy Intelligence Minister. Is it just the beginning? Hasta siempre Franco Franco Barchiesi Sociology of Work Unit Dept of Sociology Private Bag 3 University of the Witwatersrand PO Wits 2050 Johannesburg South Africa Tel. (++27 11) 716.3290 Fax (++27 11) 716.3781 E-Mail 029frb-AT-cosmos.wits.ac.za http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html http://pluto.mscc.huji.ac.il/~mshalev/direct.htm Home: 98 6th Avenue Melville 2092 Johannesburg South Africa Tel. (++27 11) 482.5011 --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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