Johannesburg - Correctional Services is unable to explain whether the widely publicised parole for the country’s most infamous prisoner has been quietly cancelled.
Authorities are also unable or unwilling to say where they have taken Eugene de Kock.
On January 30, Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha announced he had authorised parole for the former Vlakplaas commander, who was jailed 18 years ago for apartheid-era crimes.
“In the interests of nation-building and reconciliation I have decided to place De Kock on parole,” said Masutha.
But this week it emerged De Kock was not only not released on parole, but had been handed over to a branch of the security forces, believed to be the SAPS, and remained in custody.
On Friday, the Saturday Star established that no parole officer had been assigned to De Kock and he had not been processed through the Correctional Services’ community corrections section.
The Saturday Star asked the Ministry of Correctional Services if the minister had cancelled De Kock’s parole, but did not receive a response.
The ministry was also asked if Correctional Services had authorised De Kock’s removal from Kgosi Mampuru II prison in Pretoria or, if this had not been authorised, then what the authorities were doing about finding him.
There was no response.
Police national management has failed to respond to queries since Wednesday about the SAPS’s involvement in De Kock’s whereabouts, or whether he had escaped and police were seeking him.
On Friday, The Star reported that De Kock’s lawyer, Julian Knight from Pretoria, had written to Masutha, demanding that De Kock be handed over immediately to the department’s community corrections section to start his parole.
Knight said he was acting on De Kock’s instructions and had been told that he remained in custody and was being held against his will.
If Correctional Services does not allow De Kock to start his parole, then Knight has warned he will bring an urgent application in court for a writ of habeas corpus. This is an order to have a missing person produced in court, so that the court may decide if his continued detention is legal.
Knight told The Star De Kock was being held in a house and had initially been told that he was in protective custody because of a “plot” against him and that the SAPS had signed him out of the prison.
On Saturday Cope said Police Minister Nathi Nhleko should probe allegations that De Kock is being kept in a house against his will.
“If it is indeed true that he is being unlawfully detained by the security force, then the police must intervene and arrest the people who are detaining him,” said Cope spokesman Dennis Bloem.
“We had been under the impression all this while that he himself had requested the Department of Correctional Services to put him in a safe house for his own safety,” Bloem said.
“Correctional Services, therefore, should have been in charge and must know of his whereabouts. That he is a very high profile parolee makes the department's obligations even greater.”
Saturday Star and Sapa