SOUTH AFRICA: DEATH SENTENCES FOR THREE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (ANC) MEMBERS.

Record ID: 860858

  • Title: SOUTH AFRICA: DEATH SENTENCES FOR THREE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS (ANC) MEMBERS.
  • Date: 20th August 1981
  • Summary: GV EXTERIOR Pretoria court house, people standing outside LV Police on court house steps SV/CU People waiting (3 shots) SV People walk from court house down steps CU Woman weeping on bench outside court SV Police outside rear gates of court house SV/LV Police in riot gear with dogs and other police lining street (3 shots) SV PAN Two riot policemen take away arrested black SV/CU Riot policeman with whip talking to bystanders (2 shots) SV PAN Closed truck with prisoners out of gates followed by police car (1.46) BB
  • Embargoed: 4th September 1981 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: PRETORIA, SOUTH AFRICA
  • City:
  • Country: South Africa
  • Topics: General,Politics
  • Reuters ID: LVA5GQ0PD4WOZEDSDOIIIA9IM28Z
  • Aspect Ratio:
  • Story Text: INTRODUCTION: In South Africa, three members of the outlawed African National Congress (ANC) were sentenced to death by a court on Wednesday (19 August) for high treason. They were charged with taking part in guerrilla raids on oil and coal installations and another on a Johannesburg police station. The three pleaded not guilty during the court hearings.

    SYNOPSIS: The verdicts were delivered in this building, in the Pretoria Supreme Court. The judge said the defendants had received military training abroad. They returned to commit acts of treason, he said.

    Dozens of people waited outside to learn the fate of Johannes Shabangu, 26, Anthony Tsotsobe, 25, and Davide Moise, 25.

    And when those that sat in the courtroom emerged there was little doubt over what sentences had been passed. Minutes before, Davide Moise had turned to the public gallery to raise his clenched-fist in a black power salute. It is a salute often used by ANC members, pledged to overthrow white rule in South Africa.

    For this woman, a relative of one of the defendants, the verdicts of the court were just too much.

    Police, many of them wearing riot gear, guarded the streets and the rear of the court building. They feared demonstrations after earlier allegations inside the courtroom of confessions from the three, obtained by electric shock torture and beatings. The allegations made by defence lawyers were rejected by the sitting judge.

    There were arrests. This man and seven other people were held on charges of assault and of resisting arrest, according to a police spokesman.

    But there were no major outbursts of violence as the three were taken in convoy back to their prison cells.
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