Q.C. On Sabotage Charge

Press, Volume CV, Issue 31018, 25 March 1966, Page 13

Q.C. On Sabotage Charge

(N.Z P.A.-Reuter —Copyright) PRETORIA, March 24. The prosecution claimed yesterday that Abram Fischer, the alleged leader of the underground South African Communist Party, conspired with African nationalist movements to commit sabotage in South Africa. The prosecutor, Mr J. H. Liebenberg, made his allegation when the trial of Fischer opened before the Supreme Court. Fischer, a former Johannesburg advocate and Queen’s Counsel, pleaded not guilty to ail 15 charges. • He stood stiffly in the huge dock stretching across the main Criminal Court while the charges were read. The first charge was conspiring to commit sabotage.

Three others concerned membership of the illegal Communist Party and taking part in its activities, and three more related to publishing of three documents furthering the objects of Communism. The eight other charges concerned fraud and forgery. Uniformed police stood at all the doors of the Court and security branch men sat in the well of the Court as the trial began. The prosecutor claimed in his opening address that there was a "culpable link”

between Abram Fischer and Nelso Mandela, the former African National Congress leader, and others who were sentenced to life imprisonment for sabotage in June, 1964. Fischer was a leading member of the defence team at this trial. The prosecutor said evidence would show that Fischer was familiar with the document known as “Operation Mayibuye” which figured at the trial in 1964 and which set out plans for guerrilla warfare against the South

African Government. Mr Liebenberg alleged that in 1962 and 1963 the Communist Party headquarters were at Rivonia, just north of Johannesburg, and Fischer on occasion presided over meetings of the party’s central committee there. Mr Liebenberg said the Communist Party was an integral part of the South African “liberation movement,” which changed from a nonviolent to a violent policy in 1961 and formed a militant wing, Unkonto We Sizwe (“Spear of the Nation”).