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Ahmed Timol’s death was a cover-up. That was the testimony from international policy and investigations expert Frank Kennan Dutton.
Dutton’s astonishing opinion was given on day nine of the reopened inquest into the death of the apartheid activist, who died after he fell from the 10th floor of the notorious John Vorster Square.
An apartheid-era judge ruled that he jumped to his own death.
He appeared as a key witness at the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria, where he raised a number of questions surrounding the death of Timol.
He said that when the original inquest into Timol’s death took place, key witnesses were not interviewed, nor were other detainees.
“The implication of that is the inquest court couldn’t have arrived at a proper finding if they hadn’t heard all the witnesses,” Dutton told the court.
He said that there should have been a “departmental investigation” following the death of Timol, which would have shown if “standard operational procedures” were followed.
“The departmental investigation should have looked to see that all police instructions were obeyed, the standard operating procedures were obeyed, whether Mr Timol was restrained, whether there were sufficient guards guarding him … issues like that.
“And that inquiry, in my view, ought to have ended with some of the members having had disciplinary steps taken against them,” he told the court.
Dutton, who had investigated inquest into the events following Timol’s death, did not find any evidence of disciplinary enquiries that took place against any of the security branch officials.
Dutton also said that the three security policemen who were in charge of Timol should have been the specific subjects of the inquiry.
“From the inquest it appears that they were the people that were in control of Mr Timol,” he said.
In his affidavit, Dutton set out basic requirements and steps that should have occurred during the initial inquest into Timol’s death.
“It is important for any investigation but particularly the investigation into the death of a person to be considered impartial and thorough,” he said.
The following steps were outlined by Dutton:
• The investigators must be independent and as impartial as reasonably possible;
• All available evidence must be collected, observed and be presented to the inquest, including all potential witnesses must be interviewed, their statements obtained, and they must be made available to the court;
• There must be a very thorough “scene of crime” investigation;
• A thorough and impartial post-mortem should also be held; and
• All relevant material must be made available to the inquest court.
Black police officers not interviewed
In Dutton’s findings, he told the court that there “was a large contingent of black members” whose statements were not taken following Timol’s death.
“It’s surprising that none of them made a statement. None of them were approached for their view of for what they knew about the death of Ahmed Timol.”
Dutton also spoke about the impediment on the investigation, when Timol’s body was moved from the garden area of the building after he had fallen.
Yesterday two forensic experts, Professor Steve Naidoo and Dr Shakeera Holland both attested that Timol’s body should not have been moved, and that there were injuries which he had sustained prior to falling from the building.
“I believe that by moving him, the crime scene investigation could not take place,” he said.
Prior to Dutton’s testimony, Professor Don Foster, who is a social psychology specialist, was called to the stand to give his professional insight into the torture which was inflicted on detainees at the time of Timol’s death.
Foster, who did extensive research into detention and torture in South Africa 35 years ago, found that detention was regarded as a “process and not a single event”.
He found that the stress a detainee went through was not just as a result of being locked up, but began long before that when acts of intimidation or threats were inflicted on them.
“All of these aspects are mentally weakening,” he told the court.
Present at today’s proceedings was South African Communist Party second deputy general Solly Mapaila, who came to support Timol’s family in their quest to find out the truth behind Timol’s death.
Timol was a member of the SACP and was arrested on the suspicion of underground activites in 1971, at the height of apartheid rule.
