More than ten years after Palme’s assassination, Eugene de Kock, testifying in a Pretoria court, declared that he had notified the South African Attorney General of numerous apartheid crimes, notably the assassination of Palme.
De Kock had been the commander of C10, a counter-insurgency police force based just outside Pretoria, on a remote farm known as Vlakplaas. This government hit squad became the number one death squad for killing anti-apartheid activists, both in and outside of South Africa.
The government denied the existence of a group devoted to exterminating insurgents, but Vlakplaas’ purpose was to do just this. According to Max du Preez in Pale Native, “The list of murders, tortures, assaults, and kidnappings was long.”
In A Human Being Died That Night, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela points out that, “The covert operations program did not “officially” exist but was clearly necessary for apartheid to survive.” And the government saw it as that important that they pumped millions in secret funds into de Kock’s unit for years, according to Gobodo-Madikizela.
With the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), de Kock applied for amnesty and appeared before the commission for the first time in 1997. Before the TRC, de Kock confessed to crimes against humanity. He specifically confessed to more than 100 acts of murder, torture and fraud, taking full responsibility for the activities of his undercover unit.
One of these murders was that of Palme, which he said was one of Craig Williamson’s projects. Williamson was a South African Police major and an infamous apartheid spy responsible for a wealth of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations during the 1980s. From 1977, Williamson was a regular visitor to Stockholm. He has successfully infiltrated the IUEF, using it as a front to spy on the ANC and diverting funds away from its treasury back to the apartheid regime. However, there is no evidence that Williamson was in Sweden at the time of the assassination.
Williamson was investigated but never charged with the assassination.
Another possible apartheid link was Nigel Barnett, a South African military intelligence agent and a spy for apartheid South Africa. Barnett interestingly had been adopted as a child by a family with Swedish antecedents, had visited Sweden on numerous occasions, and could speak Swedish. Barnett also had videotapes of television coverage of Palme’s assassination and an airline ticket stub from Johannesburg to Stockholm from 1986. When investigated by Mozambique authorities about the murder of Palme, Barnett even failed a polygraph test when asked if he had murdered Palme. However, there is no evidence that Barnett was in Sweden at the time of the assassination.
Barnett was investigated but never charged with the assassination.
Another possible apartheid link was Roy Allen, who worked with the South African Military Intelligence in the 1980s. He worked as a spy in Europe and was in Stockholm on the night of the murder – February 28, 1986. He was questioned by South African investigators in 1996 about the Palme assassination but was never charged.
De Kock had been the commander of C10, a counter-insurgency police force based just outside Pretoria, on a remote farm known as Vlakplaas. This government hit squad became the number one death squad for killing anti-apartheid activists, both in and outside of South Africa.
The government denied the existence of a group devoted to exterminating insurgents, but Vlakplaas’ purpose was to do just this. According to Max du Preez in Pale Native, “The list of murders, tortures, assaults, and kidnappings was long.”
In A Human Being Died That Night, Pumla Gobodo-Madikizela points out that, “The covert operations program did not “officially” exist but was clearly necessary for apartheid to survive.” And the government saw it as that important that they pumped millions in secret funds into de Kock’s unit for years, according to Gobodo-Madikizela.
With the start of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), de Kock applied for amnesty and appeared before the commission for the first time in 1997. Before the TRC, de Kock confessed to crimes against humanity. He specifically confessed to more than 100 acts of murder, torture and fraud, taking full responsibility for the activities of his undercover unit.
One of these murders was that of Palme, which he said was one of Craig Williamson’s projects. Williamson was a South African Police major and an infamous apartheid spy responsible for a wealth of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations during the 1980s. From 1977, Williamson was a regular visitor to Stockholm. He has successfully infiltrated the IUEF, using it as a front to spy on the ANC and diverting funds away from its treasury back to the apartheid regime. However, there is no evidence that Williamson was in Sweden at the time of the assassination.
Williamson was investigated but never charged with the assassination.
Another possible apartheid link was Nigel Barnett, a South African military intelligence agent and a spy for apartheid South Africa. Barnett interestingly had been adopted as a child by a family with Swedish antecedents, had visited Sweden on numerous occasions, and could speak Swedish. Barnett also had videotapes of television coverage of Palme’s assassination and an airline ticket stub from Johannesburg to Stockholm from 1986. When investigated by Mozambique authorities about the murder of Palme, Barnett even failed a polygraph test when asked if he had murdered Palme. However, there is no evidence that Barnett was in Sweden at the time of the assassination.
Barnett was investigated but never charged with the assassination.
Another possible apartheid link was Roy Allen, who worked with the South African Military Intelligence in the 1980s. He worked as a spy in Europe and was in Stockholm on the night of the murder – February 28, 1986. He was questioned by South African investigators in 1996 about the Palme assassination but was never charged.
