Pretoria disputes Dutch plaint

Press, 13 July 1985, Page 10

Pretoria disputes Dutch plaint

NZPA-Reuter Pretoria South Africa said yesterday that a Dutch detainee, centre of a diplomatic row between Pretoria and The Hague, had duped security police into taking him to his embassy in a dramatic but vain bid to escape them. The Netherlands asserts that armed South African police entered the Dutch Embassy in Pretoria on Wednesday, violating the principles of diplomatic immunity, to recapture Klaas de Jonge. The South African Foreign Minister, Mr Roelof Botha, replied that Mr de Jonge, detained under the country’s toughest security law in connection with suspected terrorism, had taken the police to locations in Pretoria relevant to the investigation. During that he had undertaken to take the police to a location ostensibly situated on the first floor of the Netherlands bank building. “The police officers ... were not aware of the fact that the Netherlands Embassy was situated on this floor and that they were in fact being led to the embassy.”

Mr Botha said that Mr de Jonge broke away from his escort and partially entered what turned out to be the embassy entrance. Mr Botha said, “As he was all the time legally in custody, and as he was ostensibly in the process of pointing out another location relevant to the police investigation, his police escort pulled him back into the passage.” Mr Botha said that the investigations of Mr de Jonge included the alleged establishment of arms caches for the exiled African National Congress, pledged to overthrow white rule. A Dutch Embassy spokesman, Jacobus van der Vel-. den, said yesterday that Mr de Jonge, aged 47, had rushed into the embassy in handcuffs after escaping from the police. “Three policemen entered the embassy and they, grabbed him,” he said. The Netherlands has requested that Mr de Jonge be returned to the embassy, but Mr Botha declined at a news conference yesterday to comment on whether he would be.