12A - The Michigan Daily - Thursday, March 14, 1996
NATION/WORLD
Witness details covert operations
used to kill dissidents in S. Africa
Los Angeles Times
DURBAN, South Africa - The key
prosecution witness in the murder trial
of former Defense Minister Magnus
Malan and 19 others provided a chilling
inside look yesterday at the deadly web
of covert operations used by the former
apartheid regime to kill black dissi-
dents.
In riveting testimony, Johan Pieter
Opperman, a former South African in-
telligence officer, described how he used
code names and cover stories, secret
bank accounts and other cloak-and-dag-
ger techniques as commander of a Zulu
death-squad created by the military.
Opperman, 38, said he and otherrank-
ing operatives were even issued what
he called special "James Bond cards,"
which, like those of the fictional British
secret agent, let them operate outside
the law.
Opperman, now in a witness-protec-
tion program, identified 10 of the 20
men on trial in Durban Supreme Court
as being directly involved in the plan-
ning and execution ofa grisly hit-squad
attack that left 13 people dead, mostly
women and children, in KwaMakutha
township on Jan. 21, 1987.
He said intelligence had indicated
that the house would be used that night
for an illegal meeting of anti-apartheid
activists. Instead, members of the 12
Apostles of Christ Church and their
families were asleep after choir prac-
tice.
Opperman did not directly implicate
Malan, who was defense chief from
1980 to 1991, or other top military
JOSH WHITE/Daily
leaders of the apartheid era also on trial,
in the atrocity.
But prosecutors said documents
would be used later in the trial to prove
the generals had authorized training,
arming and deploying 206 militant
Zulus to support Chief Mangosuthu
Buthelezi's Inkatha Freedom Party in
its bitter and bloody rivalry with the
African National Congress.
The covert project was code-named
"Operation Marion," apparently from
"marionette."
"The military was pulling the strings.
Inkatha was the puppet," said a court
official familiar with the evidence.
Buthelezi, who is repeatedly cited in
the indictment but was not charged,
acknowledged to reporters Monday that
Inkathahad chosen the men for military
training. But he angrily dismissed alle-
gations of involvement in hit-squad
activity as ."utter poppycock."
Opperman said the Zulu recruits were
given special training - including
"house-breaking, kidnapping, sniping
and urban warfare" - in late 1986 at
Camp Hippo, a secret military base in
what is now Namibia. He said the re-
cruits were "told they were in Israel,"
and that he and other instructors used
false names and pretended they worked
for a civilian company.
Other South African camps were used
for covert training of rebel forces fight-
ing black-led governments in Angola,
Mozambique and Lesotho, he said.
After graduating, Opperman said, the
Zulus were flown back to Durban and
given ID cards from Omega Security
Services, a fictitious firm. But he said
the trainees soon demanded action and
Buthelezi's chief aide, M.Z. Khumalo,
complained he had "206 hungry lions
on his hands."
Opperman said four potential vic-
tims were chosen after security police
and military intelligence had confirmed
they were not informants.
He said Victor Ntuli, a KwaMakutha
resident, 'was picked as the first target
because he was "pay master" for guer-
rilla operations against Inkatha.
Bulletproof vests and other gear were
purchased from a German arms dealer
in Johannesburg, and the military pro-
vided AK-47 assault rifles and a Toyota
minivan.
Opperman said he stole license plates
for the van and hung fake posters on it
for the Jabulani Disco.
AP P"To
A Serb family passes a poster of Bosnian President Alija izetbegovic as they pass through a Bosnian-held area of Sarajevo
Reunification seems unikl
f nas M usis dive,. off Serb
ii
Calling all interested
UofMStudents...
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1. The word, "~League Underground "must be
written out on the logo design.
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white card stock. Please send two copies.
3. The contestant's name, address, tel. no., and ID
no. must be written on the back of each entry.
4. The selected logo design will become the
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5. The Michigan League, if necessary, reserves the
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7. The Michigan League Programming student
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Price for the Winner:
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Deadline for submission of entry is April 8, 1996 at 5PM
Los Angeles Times
ILIDZA, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Through days of arson
fires and rising tension, 52-year-old Bozidar Ratkovic, a
Serb, resisted pressure from Bosnian Serb gangs to abandon
the farm and home he owned in this Sarajevo suburb.
They threatened to kill him ifhe stayed after Ilidza switched
to Muslim-Croat control. He began to tell people he planned
to join the Serbian exodus, even though he had no intention
of doing so.
But yesterday, the day after Muslim-Croat authorities took
over the hard-line Serbian district, Ratkovic watched in
dismay as newly arrived Muslim gangs drove off with his
farm equipment. He fully expected the belligerent youths to
take the animals next, and another group
demanded his apartment. Ths -
Serbs who dared to heed the interna- s.
tional community's plea that they stay blow to t
in a capital city reunifying under the
Bosnian peace accord are now being multiet-
victimized by Muslims engaged in loot-
ing, intimidation and death threats, charActe.
NATO and U.N. international police
officials said. CS raj o
Many feel forced to flee, as the latest
turn in Bosnia's wheel of ethnic strife - Ali
sees displaced Muslims displacing U.N
Serbs. It also plays into the hands of
hard-line Bosnian Serb leaders like
RadovarrKaradzic, who said all along that Muslims and
sives. U.N. officials were especially critical of the Musli
led Sarajevo government for failing to control its people.
Ratkovic, the Ilidza farmer, is braver than most, vowing
not to abandon the town he has called home for 35 years.
"I stayed here to spite the Serbs," he said, "and now I will
stay here to spite the Muslims."
Others were less resilient.
Men began knocking on the door of 71-year-old Lena
Crkvenjas' two-story family home early Tuesday, asking if
she'd be willing to give them her house. Three of the men
insisted on staying the night, departing yesterday with pla
bags full of clothing, a radio and other household good
Crkvenjas fried them eggs forbreak.
but told them that she and her 80-year-old
another husband, Simo, wanted to keep theirhouse.
"It was unpleasant, but you have to
survive," she said, tears flushing her
cheeks. "We want to stay. We are old.
What can we do if we go?"
Up and down Crkvenjas' street in a
heavily Serb Ilidza neighborhood,home
after home was in the process of being
occupied or looted yesterday. Th-
Kander Ivanko that had been abandoned, even temp-
r
Sf
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Serbs can't live together - and waged a war based on the
idea of ethnically purifying areas by force.
"This is another blow to the multiethnic character of
Sarajevo," said U.N. spokesperson Alexander Ivanko. "It is
a shame, really a shame, that some of the people who have
come to llidza from Sarajevo are behaving in the same
appalling and outrageous manner as some of the Serbs were
before they left the area - intimidating and harassing law-
abiding people."
International police monitors received more than 100
complaints overnight, Ivanko said, with some Muslims re-
portedly threatening their victims with grenades or explo-
spokesperson rarily, were easy prey.
Arriving Muslims had placed hand-
lettered signs on the homes, stating they
were now the possession of "sehid" families, the word used
to describe Bosnian Muslim fighters "martyred" in the war.
About a dozen young Muslim men in civilian clothes and
with army-style haircuts roamed the street and took orders
from a man with a notebook and expensive walkie-talkie.
Confronted by reporters, the man said he worked for "civil
protection" under Bosnia's Interior Ministry, a repository
hard-line Muslim militancy.
The men watched calmly as other Muslims openly looted
homes and drove or walked away with the goods. One couple
loaded a hot water tank in the back of their blue van. Some
challenged the remaining Serbs who peered from their win-
dows or front porches: "Who owns this house? Is it Serb?"
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