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

DATE: WEDNESDAY, October 26, 1994                   TAG: 9411180020
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A10   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA                                 LENGTH: Short

3 SOUTH AFRICANS GUILTY IN U.S. STUDENT'S DEATH

Three blacks were convicted Tuesday of murdering a white American student, ending a trial that forced South Africa to confront the bitterness of its racial division.

Prosectors sought the death penalty for Vusumzi Ntamo, Mongezi Manqina and Mzikhona Nofemela, who were found guilty of killing Amy Biehl in a black township where the Fulbright scholar was helping with voter education leading up to South Africa's first all-race election.

``This was a racist killing. She was killed because she was white,'' prosecutor Nollie Niehaus said at the sentencing hearing where he appealed for the death penalty.

An attorney for the defendants, Justice Poswa, said the killing was politically motivated.

Executions in South Africa were suspended by the white government of former President F.W. de Klerk. President Nelson Mandela's ruling African National Congress favors abolishing the death penalty.

by CNB