Issued by: Truth and Reconciliation Commission
JULY 12, 1996
STATEMENT FROM THE COMMITTEE ON AMNESTY OF THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION (TRC)
An amnesty application by two members of an organisation called the National Socialist Partisans (NSP) will be heard by the Amnesty Committee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Pretoria next week.
The applications are from Cornelius Johannes van Wyk, serving sentences of life imprisonment on three counts of murder, and Jean Prieur du Plessis, who is serving 12 year's imprisonment for crimes including robbery, the theft of weapons from the SA Defence Force and illegal possession of firearms.
Van Wyk was convicted of the murder of Ms. Makoarela Dobani, Mr. Wilson Dobani and Mrs. Maria Claudine Roux at Cloud's End, Louis Trichardt, in October 1991. Du Plessis was acquitted on these counts at their trial, but both men were convicted on seven other charges arising out of their activities.
The men were sentenced in the Transvaal Provincial Division of the Supreme Court in September 1994.
Two other members of the NSP, Johannes Jurgens Grobbelaar and Jurgen Matthews White, died after being pursued in a stolen car by the South African Police at Noenieput, near Upington, in November 1991.
(Mr. Grobbelaar's mother gave evidence at a hearing of the Commission's Human Rights Violations Committee in Johannesburg in April, where she raised questions about the manner of her son's death.)
Inquiries: John Allen 082-452-7859