Rare trial for S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas

Press, 15 March 1982, Page 20

Rare trial for S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas

Ry

DENIS HERBSTEIN,

in London

The South African authors ties in Windhoek, the capital of Namibia, have put on trial three S.W.A.P.O. “terrorists” allegedly captured within the. borders of the disputed territory. The hearing, which will resume in May, was a rare event, for normally nothing is heard of South-West African People’s Organisation guerrillas once they are captured by the South African Army. Though official "body-count” claims add up to thousands killed, only a few dozen prisoners have been reported in over a decade of guerrilla warfare.

5.W.A.P.0., the main liberation movement, says that its captured soldiers “are either killed on the spot or despatched after Interrogation in one of the South African Army bases.” As the fighting goes on, the Western Contact Group — Britain, the United States, France, West Germany and Canada — which for five years has been holding the ring between South Africa and 5.W.A.P.0., is still trying to reach a settlement in Namibia. The delicate operation has reached another crucial phase as Pretoria prepares . its response to the United Nations settlement plan.

Meanwhile, estimates of South African troops in the territory are as high as 100,000, which is one in 12 of the population. According to church sources, there are 1000 to 2000 S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas in Namibia, with another 5000 being trained in Angola.

When, as happened last September, the South African Army captures a Russian while on a “hot pursuit” raid into .Angola, publicity is unstinting. Nicolai Pestretsov was later reported by the Red Cross to be well treated. Cuban prisoners have been exchanged for South African soldiers captured in Angola. The Red Cross have visited Angolan army prisoners held in camps in northern Namibia. Official South African figures on S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas are, however, very scarce. Access is never permitted. When the International Committee of the Red Cross opened a Windhoek office last August, an official, Mr Peter Lutolf, complained that he did not know what happened to S.W.A.P.O. prisoners and wounded. “We are not even informed by the authorities if there are any,” he said. “It simply does not happen in any conflict or battle that you have a clash with 200 people and 45 killed and no prisoners or wounded are taken.”

Mr Lutolf was forced to leave by the Pretoria Government, but his words seem to have had some effect A month later, following the "Operation Protea” raid into Angola, an army spokesman said eight S.W.A.P.O. troops had been captured. Soon afterwards, the Minister of Police disclosed that 23 S.W.A.P.O. prisoners had been taken during 50 clashes inside Namibia in the previous two months.

Last December, after another raid into Angola (Opera-

tion Daisy), the Army announced that 71 S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas had been “killed or taken prisoner.” S.W.A.P.O. prisoners are sighted occasionally, usually by civilian Namibians taken in for questioning. Recently, a civilian in the police detention centre at Oshakati, Ovamboland, claimed he was made to remove clothing from corpses of guerrillas killed by the; South Africans. The faces were smashed beyond recognition. A former South African soldier now in London told me last week that “guerrillas are taken to one of the 20 camps along the border where the Army squeezes what information it can out of them and if they say nothing, they are killed.” However, he did report that there were two camps in Ovamboland, one for “tame ‘terrs’ who had co-operated, the other for untame ‘terrs’ who would not talk.” There have also been rumours of detention camps in the forests, but in the light of the popular following for S.W.A.P.O. in the north, their existence would probably have leaked out. The Red Cross has visited some Namibians held without trial under emergency laws, as well as convicted political prisoners in Namibia and on Robben Island, near Cape Town. It has also seen Cuban, Russian and Angolan Army prisoners and has had access to 118 Namibians brought back by South African troops in May, 1978, while on a raid on a refugee camp deep in Angola. For two years, Pretoria

denied their existence, until a group escaped from their prison in an army camp near Mariental, in southern Namibia. The prisoners were seen by the Red Cross which reported they were held under a law. which provides for detention without trial in a “war zone” for up to 30 days. No names were released. But these prisoners are not considered to be combatants. Red Cross headquarters in Geneva said recently that their officials had not been allowed to visit any S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas captured in battle.

The Government of Mr Piet Botha has refused to grant prisoner-of-war status to S.W.A.P.O. guerrillas under the Geneva Convention. South Africa signed the original convention, but has not ratified a 1977 protocol which covers international liberation conflicts.

Mr Marco Ferrari, a lawyer at Red Cross headquarters, explained that then S.W.A.P.O. could also apply for protection. The liberation movement has. however, made a Declaration of Intention under the protocol that it will treat South African

prisoners according to the Geneva Convention. Mr Johan van der Mescht, its one white South African prisoner, has been visited by the Red Cross in a camp in Angola. But the Red Cross has no powers to persuade Pretoria to treat S.W.A.P.O. differently, even though it is not an illegal organisation in Namibia. A Defence Force spokesman said: “We consider members of S.W.A.P.O. terrorists and not soldiers, as we do members of the Angolan Army." — Copyright, London Observer Service.!