The correctional services department says it was under no obligation to provide details on Eugene de Kock's parole hearing.
|||The correctional services department on Thursday said it was under no obligation to provide details on apartheid assassin Eugene de Kock's parole hearing.
Department spokesman Sonwabo Mbananga said he did not understand why people needed to know about the hearing.
“I am under no obligation to disclose any information about the hearings, and I do not appreciate people asking me about it. What is this obsession with the case?”
De Kock's hearing was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, but was postponed.
The department was unable to explain the reasons for the postponement or confirm the new date set for the hearing, said another department spokesman Phumlani Ximiya.
De Kock, along with fellow hit squad killer Ferdi Barnard, were among a number of inmates affected by a Pretoria High Court ruling made in July this year.
It stipulated that anyone sentenced to life imprisonment before October 2004 must automatically be considered for parole after serving 13 years and four months of their sentence.
“The law requires that the department facilitates for the inmate to be considered for parole... It's because of that ruling that his (De Kock's) consideration for parole has been put forward,” Ximiya said.
He said the standard procedure for a parole application started with a case management committee compiling a profile on the inmate. The committee would hand over the profile to the parole board and suggest the direction in which the application should go.
The parole board would then make a decision on the inmate's eligibility based on the profile and factors such as the length of incarceration, and whether the inmate had attended rehabilitation programmes, such as for anger management or self-control.
Submissions from victims were also considered.
The board would then make a recommendation to a national council. The council would look into the case and pass on its recommendation to the minister, who had the final say.
Ximiya said the department had previously published a call in newspapers for victims or their relatives to make submissions when criminals sentenced to life before October 2004 came up for parole.
De Kock, the commander of the apartheid-era Vlakplaas security police unit, is currently serving two life terms and 212 years at Pretoria's C-max prison for masterminding assassinations of suspected anti-apartheid activists. – Sapa