Cops quiet about probe and alleged Papas link

Published Aug 21, 2000

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Cape Town police on Monday declined to release any further information on the progress of investigations into the car-bomb blast outside a gay bar in Green Point late on Saturday night.

Five people, including doorman Brian Abrahams, 31, were injured when the device detonated in a green Nissan Sentra at The Bronx bar about 10pm.

Sergeant Esther Kotze said the investigation was at a sensitive stage.

"We don't want to release any information because it could jeopardise the investigation."

Kotze was not prepared to discuss what type of device it was, whether it was detonated by remote control or cellphone or who was behind the bombing.

Kotze was also not prepared to say whether the blast was linked to the one at the Constantia Village shopping centre over two weeks ago when a car bomb detonated in the car park injuring two people.

Kotze said police had never heard of a group who called themselves People Against Prostitution and Sodomy (Papas).

The national leader of the executive board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance (GLA), Juan Uys, who was at the scene of the blast, said his party had been threatened by Papas.

"A day after the blast at the Blah bar in November last year in Somerset Road, I received a call on my cellphone from a man speaking English who said he was from Papas - a division of People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad)."

Uys said his three businesses and 20 gay businesses based in Gauteng had been warned by Papas on several occasions to shut down within two weeks.

But Pagad's legal co-ordinator Cassiem Parker said during a Pagad awareness march in Factreton on the Cape Flats on Sunday that he had never heard of the group: "Pagad has no affiliation with Papas."

Three people injured in Saturday night's blast were treated in the casualty section of City Park hospital and discharged, while another person was treated at Somerset hospital, where Abrahams was recuperating.

Saturday's attack on The Bronx was the second on a gay club after the Blah Bar blast, which injured 10 people. It was the fifth attack in Cape Town this year. - Sapa

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