Convicted+apartheid+assassin+Ferdi+Barnard+applies+for+pardon,+SABC



=Convicted apartheid assassin applies for pardon=


 * SABC, 21 January 2008, 13:30**

Former CCB operative and convicted apartheid assassin, Ferdi Barnard, is applying for a presidential pardon.

The amnesty window for people applying for a presidential pardon - for alleged political offences - started last week and ends on April 15. The window period for applications was announced by President Thabo Mbeki in Parliament in November.

A Multi-Party Reference Group will consider applications for pardons and will make recommendations to the President. People convicted of committing alleged political offences before 16 June 1999 will be able to apply for a Presidential pardon.

Those who were refused amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) will not qualify. Barnard was convicted in 1998 of, among other crimes, murdering anti-apartheid activist David Webster and attempting to murder former Justice Minister Dullah Omar.

He has been in prison for 10 years already and has married while serving his sentence. Barnard's advocate, Faan Coetzee, says his client already applied for a presidential pardon in 2002. He will now file supplementary papers to the President before the end of the week.

Under the Apartheid government, the South African Civil Cooperation Bureau (CCB) was a covert, special forces organisation whose objectives were to eliminate anti-apartheid activists throughout the world and to destroy ANC facilities both inside and outside South Africa.


 * From: http://www.sabcnews.com/south_africa/crime1justice/0,2172,162812,00.html**

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