Boeremag: JC wraps up testimony
2003-11-05 11:55
Pretoria - The first State witness to testify in the Boeremag treason trial completed a week's evidence in the Pretoria High Court on Wednesday.
Over the past few days, police informer Johannes Coenraad Smit told the court how a group of men plotted to overthrow the government as members of the rightwing Boeremag organisation.
He plotted with them, while all the time being a police spy.
The trial was postponed to next Wednesday for defence lawyers to consider Smit's evidence before cross-examining him.
Smit told the court since last Wednesday how the Boeremag planned to "chase" all blacks out of the country to Zimbabwe via the N1 highway.
The country's Indian population, he said, would have been chased on the N3 to the coast, from where they would have been shipped to India.
He testified how power stations would have been blown up, defence force bases taken over and "enemies" of the Boers eliminated.
Plans to blow up an American Boeing at the Cape Town International Airport were hatched at a strip club, Smit told the court.
A former member of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, Smit became a police informer in 1994.
He was testifying in the trial of 22 men charged with plotting a rightwing coup d'etat. They face 42 charges ranging from murder and attempted murder to treason, terrorism, sabotage, and arms and explosives violations.
The trial was to have started in May, but only got under way last week after numerous delays caused by wrangling with the Legal Aid Board and complaints of prison maltreatment by the accused.
Meanwhile, another urgent application has been lodged by lawyers representing 13 of the accused over alleged intolerable conditions in jail.
Advocate Piet Pistorius told the court on Wednesday he was in settlement discussions with prison authorities.
- SAPA