Pretoria - Another apartheid-era killer - Ferdi Barnard - jailed for life and serving time with Eugene de Kock at the Kgosi Mampuru II Prison in Pretoria, may soon be a free man.
Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha also undertook to - as in the case of De Kock – decide by the end of January whether Barnard should be paroled or not. Correctional Services agreed to make recommendations to the minister by December 19 on Barnard’s possible parole.
Earlier, Masutha turned down Barnard’s bid for freedom and said as with De Kock, the families of Barnard’s victims had to be consulted first before parole was reconsidered. Barnard’s advocate, Roelof du Plessis SC, told the high court in Pretoria that meetings had already taken place between Barnard and certain of his victims’ families.
But Du Plessis argued that restorative justice - whether in the form of consultations with victims, their families and other affected people - is not a legal prerequisite for parole. He said it was definitely not a requirement in 1996 when Barnard faced an array of charges, including two of murder.
Du Plessis said the law provided that a court, during sentencing of an accused on a murder charge, should tell the victim’s family that they can oppose parole one day. The duty is placed on the family to inform the department if they intended to oppose parole, he said.
If the authorities insisted that restorative justice was a prerequisite for parole, they should’ve taken steps to comply with this. They did not - either because they were grossly negligent or wanted to hamper Barnard’s chances to be released, he said. Barnard was sentenced in 1998 to two life terms and a further 63 years in jail. His crimes included the murder of anti-apartheid activist, Dr David Webster. He was also convicted of the attempted murder of former minister Dullah Omar.
Barnard was at the time an undercover agent of the notorious Civil Co-operation Bureau.
Pretoria News