Pretoria - The High Court in Pretoria has granted Chris Hani’s killer Clive Derby-Lewis medical parole with immediate effect.
Judge Selby Baqwa ruled on Friday morning that while the medical parole must be granted immediately to Derby-Lewis, “this does not necessarily mean the elderly killer will go home today”.
After the judgment, Derby-Lewis’s lawyer Julian Knight said it would be up to his client’s doctors to decide whether he would stay in hospital or if they could do nothing more and he would go home to die.
Judge Baqwa gave prison authorities until next Friday (June 5) to draw up parole conditions.
The 79-year-old Derby-Lewis, who has served 21 years in jail for his part in the assassination of SACP leader Hani in 1993, has terminal lung cancer, his counsel told the court.
According to advocate Roelof du Plessis, two doctors diagnosed him with stage 4 cancer.
In December they gave him six months to live.
His lawyers had been asking the court to accept that Derby-Lewis suffered from stage 4 cancer and that he was at death’s door.
He said all his client wanted was to die in a dignified manner at home, with his wife and family.
He said apart from being terminally ill, Derby-Lewis had also expressed his remorse for his part in the murder of Hani. He invited Hani’s widow Limpho Hani to visit him in the Eugene Marais Hospital in Pretoria, where he has been treated for more than a year now, so that he could apologise in person.
Hani’s widow Limpho, who was in court on Friday morning, has not accepted his apology.
She has from the beginning been opposed to Derby-Lewis being freed – either on parole or medical parole.
Pretoria News