Motherwell, South Africa: car bomber to appeal ruling

South African High Court in Pretoria (Associated Press)


Motherwell bomber to appeal ruling
August 03 2007 at 05:37PM

Motherwell bomber Wal du Toit was on Friday granted leave to appeal a High Court ruling that he has no right to return to his police job despite getting amnesty.
The challenge will be heard by the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloeomfontein.
Pretoria High Court judge Fanie Mynhardt, who granted the leave, in June dismissed with costs Du Toit's application to be reinstated with retroactive effect dating back 11 years.
Du Toit was a brigadier and national commander of the security police's technical unit when he was dismissed from his post in 1996.
In June that year he and fellow security policemen Gideon Nieuwoudt and Martinus Ras were convicted and sentenced to 15, 20 and 10 years' imprisonment respectively for their role in the car bomb murders of three fellow security police officer and a civilian at Motherwell outside Port Elizabeth in 1989.
Nieuwoudt has since died of cancer.
Du Toit applied for amnesty along with other security police officers for the Motherwell incident, claiming the bombing was politically motivated.
An amnesty committee turned them down in 1999, but Du Toit successfully appealed the ruling in the Cape High Court, after which a new committee did grant amnesty in December 2005.
Du Toit maintained in his reinstatement application this year that the amnesty had wiped his slate clean and that he was entitled to be reinstated as if he had never been convicted and sentenced for the Motherwell incident.
He said he also relied on an undertaking by former national police commissioner George Fivaz, who had signed a letter in December 1999 informing Du Toit that he would be reinstated if he was granted amnesty.
However Fivaz' successor Jackie Selebi said Fivaz had received incorrect legal advice and that the Police Act allowed reinstatement only where there had been an acquittal or absolution.
Judge Mynhardt said in June that Du Toit's services had been legally terminated after his conviction and sentence, and in terms of the Police Act he could be reinstated only if he applied within 30 days after his appeal against his conviction and sentence had succeeded and he was acquitted, or his sentence had been changed to a non-custodial one.
In Du Toit's case, such an appeal was never heard, the judge said.
He said that in terms of the 1995 Promotion of National Unity and Reconciliation Act, amnesty only erased a conviction and sentence, and did not stipulate that the crime should also be regarded as never having been committed.
Counsel for Du Toit argued before Mynhardt this week that he had erred in his findings and should have found that amnesty resulted in the act being considered as never having been committed at all.
It was argued that his findings would mean that amnesty was no more than a mere indemnity against criminal and civil steps. - Sapa