SOUTH AFRICA: CONVICTED DE KOCK IMPLICATES SPY IN 1986 ASSASSINATION

(26 Sep 1996) English/Nat
A former police officer, convicted of killing anti-apartheid activists, has now implicated a former South African spy in the 1986 assassination of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
Eugene de Kock made the revelation in court on Thursday.
He says he'd given the attorney general's office information that an operation headed by former spy Craig Williamson was involved in Palme's murder.
The Swedish Prime Minister was an anti-apartheid crusader and was shot in the back while walking home with his wife in Stockholm in February 1986.
The former police commander Eugene de Kock nicknamed "Prime Evil" by his colleagues was back in court in Pretoria on Thursday.
And as he has been doing throughout the sentencing phase of his murder trial, de Kock continued to make allegations about corruption and wrong doing during the apartheid regime.
The 47 year-old former police officer, seen here in a white shirt, is being cross-examined on evidence ahead of his sentencing on 89 charges including six murders.
De Kock told the Judge Willie Van der Merwe he had approached the attorney general's office with information about "Operation Long Reach" - an alleged covert security force operation headed by former spy Craig Williamson,
De Kock said the it was involved in the 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme.
He was one of the most outspoken critics of apartheid, and was at the forefront of imposing sanctions on South Africa and supporting the now governing A-N-C through the 1960s and 70s.
SOUNDBITE:
"If it's true the implication is quite serious. It suggests that the (P.W.) Botha regime was involved in international terrorism or assassination or whatever you'd like to call it and that puts that state in the same category as Iran and Iraq, Libya and so on. It is quite an extraordinary allegation if true."
SUPER CAPTION: Professor Alf Stadler, Head of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
Palme, an anti-apartheid crusader, was killed February 28 1986, by a lone assassin who shot him in the back with a point-357 magnum pistol.
The killer escaped into the night and has never been identified.
De Kock is hoping for a reduced sentence by revealing his involvement in other crimes under the South African Truth Commission.
SOUNDBITE:
"He's been dumped, basically by the National Party, by the rest of the or the old security apparatus and he's singing. And he's got a very interesting song to sing. And I don't know if they're any more revelations of this kind but he's spreading his net very wide."'
SUPER CAPTION: Professor Alf Stadler, Head of Political Studies, University of the Witwatersrand
The lawyer in the attorney general's office who met with de Kock declined to say specifically whether she had been given any information on the Palme killing.
She would only say de Kock had given information on a number of cases.
De Kock was the head of Vlakplaas, an covert apartheid-era police unit notorious for murdering and torturing anti-apartheid activists.
Palme's widow, Lisbeth, visited South Africa in January as part of a United Nations sponsored Eminent Persons Group to examine the impact of violent children.
While in the country she met Archbishop Desmond Tutu.
She was with her husband when he got shot walking home from a cinema.
If de Kock's allegations are true, she may finally learn the reasons behind her husband's murder.
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