
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 15, 1990                   TAG: 9004150033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA                                LENGTH: Medium

MANDELA SAYS ANC TORTURED DISSIDENTS

Nelson Mandela admitted Saturday that his African National Congress had tortured dissident guerrillas, but said the officials involved were punished and any further torture had been banned.

Mandela made the surprising admission in a brief airport statement. He said the claims of some ANC guerrillas that they had been tortured were true, that he deplored the action and promised it would not happen again.

"Unfortunately, it is true that some of these people who have complained were in fact tortured. But once the ANC became aware . . . immediate steps were taken to discipline those who were guilty of torturing other people," he said.

Mandela did not specify the punishment inflicted on those responsible for the torture, but he said the commanders of the camps where the torture took place had been dismissed.

"The ANC is against torture or any form of coercion in order to extract information from those who are suspected of having broken the laws and the regulations which they are required to obey," he said.

In Nairobi, Kenya, Saturday, seven former South African guerrillas said they had been tortured by ANC commanders as mutineers.

The guerrillas said they were tortured at two punishment camps in Angola called Pango and Quatro. They said they were tied to trees and flogged with whips, locked into metal transport containers that were left out in the searing African sun, and were beaten and kicked by ANC commanders and their jailers.

The seven were attached to the ANC's military wing, Umkhonto we Sizwe (Spear of the Nation), in Angola after training in East Germany and the Soviet Union in the early 1980s.

They said they mutinied against their leaders in 1984, were held in detention centers and Angolan prisons for four years and then moved to a Dakawa camp in Tanzania after being freed on "humanitarian" grounds.

They quit the military wing in Tanzania last December and fled to Nairobi, they said. They added that they were eager to return to South Africa after seeking sanctuary in Kenya early this year.

"We're still waiting for word when we can go," Luvo Mbengo, 28, one of the ANC recruits, told The Associated Press. "But we still don't know what our future is."

by CNB