Former Death Squad Leader To Be Arrested

Police announced Wednesday that they will arrest a former secret police death squad leader who became the country’s best-known whistle-blower on atrocities of the apartheid regime, and four other former security policemen for the 1981 murder of a prominent human rights lawyer.

Prosecution of former hit squad commander Dirk Coetzee, whose secret police unit allegedly killed Durban attorney Griffiths Mxenge 15 years ago, came as a surprise: Coetzee publicly confessed his role in the brutal slaying and other assassinations in 1989 and became the first ranking insider to expose the former government’s dirty war against its foes at home and abroad.