“My father was a lot stronger, but my mother relived this pain throughout her life.”
These were the sorrowful words of Mohammed Timol, describing how his parents dealt with the mysterious and tragic death of his older brother Ahmed at the hands of apartheid security police in 1971.
Mohammed spoke to Independent Media on the sidelines of the reopened inquest into his brother’s death, which began yesterday in the Johannesburg High Court.
The inquest brought by Timol’s family aims at overturning a June 1972 ruling by magistrate JL De Villiers that Timol had committed suicide by jumping out of the 10th floor of the infamous John Vorster Square, now known as Johannesburg Central Police Station.
The presiding officer in the reopened inquest, Judge J Mothle, said in court yesterday that he had no doubt this process would rekindle painful memories.
Two witnesses were called to give testimony in court yesterday, where gruesome details emerged from Dr Salim Essop about how he was “brutally tortured” by security police at John Vorster Square.
Essop was arrested with Ahmed after a car they were travelling in was stopped by apartheid police. Banned SACP and ANC literature was found in the car.
Essop told the court about a range of torture tactics that were meted out against him, including having a plastic bag tied around his head to a point where he felt like he was suffocating, being kicked repeatedly in a method known as “mule kickers”, and being subjected to electric shock that caused him “excruciating pain”.
Essop added that he was held upside down on the 10th floor of the notorious prison after being subjected to roughly five days of
torture and was told he would be dropped.
“I was in such pain (that) if they (police) dropped me at that moment, it would’ve been fine.”
It also emerged from the inquest’s investigating officer Captain Benjamin Nel that only three officials involved in Timol’s mysterious death were still alive.
They are Warrant Officer N Els, who was called to identify the communist documents found with Timol and Essop; Sergeant J Rodrigues, who was a clerk at John Vorster Square; and Sergeant JP Fourie, who worked at the State mortuary.
The inquest will continue today with an on-sight inspection of the old John Vorster Square.