NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #27/NN_1992_27.iso/spool/misc/activism/progress/8477

Text File | 1992-11-17 | 5.4 KB | 91 lines

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From: Eugene McElroy <[e-mail]>
Subject: NORTHERN IRELAND POLICE IN SOUTH AFRICAN MURDER PLOT
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Date: Tue, 17 Nov 1992 22:07:46 GMT
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          NORTHERN IRELAND POLICE IN SOUTH AFRICAN MURDER PLOT
                   (from An Phoblacht/Republican News
                           November 12, 1992)

      The RUC (Royal Ulster Constabulary) were directly involved in the
London plot by South African state agents to assassinate former security police
officer and political dissident, Dirk Coetzee, it was revealed this week.
      According to a secret South African government document, the RUC team
not only provided surveillance and intelligence on the intended target, but also
offered to "take him out" if required.
      The document also reveals that South African agent, Leon Flores, paid
2,000 pounds sterling to a Northern Ireland contact, Charles Simpson "for
services rendered by his RUC friends in monitoring the activities of Dirk
Coetzee."
      The revelation came in the wake of an internal inquiry by the South
African government after two of their agents were arrested in London last April
under the Prevention of Terrorism Act and interrogated about a possible
conspiracy to murder a defector from the South African security police
currently living in Britain.
      During the interrogation the two South Africans claimed that their secret
mission was to gather information on possible links between the IRA and ANC as
part of a propaganda initiative designed to discredit the ANC. The South
African government initially reiterated its agents' statements until revelations
about the assassination plot forced the government to distance itself.
      An internal inquiry by the Pretoria government was prompted after the
revelations in the British media forced the British government to put pressure
on De Klerk. It was claimed that the South African agents conspired with
loyalist assassins in what their intended victim, Coetzee, described as a
'contract killing.'
      Dirk Coetzee, who miraculously survived four murder attempts in three
years, is considered a prime target for the Pretoria regime. The former
security police officer was directly involved in Pretoria's dirty war against the
ANC.
      In 1989 Coetzee fled to Zambia where he revealed his own role in a series
of poisonings and wayside murders. He also implicated one of the most senior
members in the South African security establishment, Col. Eugene de Kock,
who Coetzee linked to a number of hit squad killings of ANC activists. De Kock
was promoted to colonel after Coetzee revealed his role in death squad killings.
      In the latest attempt on Coetzee's life, two South African state agents,
who arrived on a secret mission in London last summer, were met at Heathrow
Airport by Belfast-born Charles Simpson.
      The agents were Pamela du Randt, a captain in the South African
Intelligence Service and Secretary to the South African head of military
intelligence, and Leon Flores, a former police officer on the South African
military intelligence payroll.
      From Heathrow the two were taken by Simpson to a pre-arranged meeting
at the Three Kings public house in West Kensington with what British
intelligence, in a briefing to the British media identified as a "well-known
loyalist gunman."
      However, in a secret internal inquiry by the South African military
intelligence, only part of which was given to the British embassy by way of an
official explanation, it was revealed that those identified by British intelligence
to the media as 'loyalist gunmen' are in fact members of the RUC, though given
the extensive collusion between the RUC and loyalist death squads, it is
understandable that British intelligence would make such a connection.
      The document also alleges that Simpson, identified in the British media
simply as a loyalist with known South African connections, is probably a British
intelligence agent. The document states that: "The only conclusion that can be
drawn is that Simpson is an agent of the British intelligence services."
      According to the British intelligence briefing to the media, after the West
Kensington meeting, two of the three men identified as RUC members by the
South African intelligence services were watching a flat in Hinde Street in
London's West End in which Coetzee and his children had been living.
      Meanwhile, the two South African agents, Randt and Flores, were
escorted by alleged British intelligence agent Charles Simpson to a 'large house'
forty miles outside Belfast for a second meeting where, according to the South
African document, further "payment by means of the supply of Semtex (plastic
explosives), weapons, night vision equipment and electronic eavesdropping
devices" was discussed for the continued monitoring of Coetzee. According to
journalist John Carlin in the London 'Independent', "If true, it exposes the
existence of a dirty tricks department in the RUC dealing semtex and weapons."
                                ********

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