{"id":11352,"date":"2013-10-28T12:14:56","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T12:14:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11352"},"modified":"2013-10-28T12:14:56","modified_gmt":"2013-10-28T12:14:56","slug":"boeremag-accused-to-be-sentenced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=11352","title":{"rendered":"Boeremag accused to be sentenced"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Some<\/a>
Some of the Boeremag accused in court<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A South African court began sentencing Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country.<\/p>\n

The “Boeremag” organisation had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government.<\/p>\n

The trial lasted almost a decade until the organisation’s members were convicted in August last year — the first guilty verdicts for treason since the end of apartheid in 1994.<\/p>\n

“The accused had aimed to overthrow the government through unconstitutional methods that included violence,” said High Court judge Eben Jordaan as he began the two-day sentencing hearing.<\/p>\n

“They planned a violent attack against people of colour that would certainly be followed by retaliation attacks against whites as a result,” Jordaan said at the hearing taking place in the same Pretoria courtroom where Mandela was convicted of treason in 1964.<\/p>\n

One woman died and dozens of people were injured in blasts that shook the Johannesburg township of Soweto in October 2002.<\/p>\n

All 20 accused were convicted of treason, but only five of murder and the plot to kill Nobel peace laureate Mandela, South Africa’s first black president.<\/p>\n

The state is seeking life sentences for the group’s leaders and bomb specialists, and 10 to 15 years in prison for the other defendants.<\/p>\n

South Africa does not have the death sentence.<\/p>\n

“We are hoping for a good conviction,” said Paul Ramoloka, spokesman for specialist police unit the Hawks, who investigated the plot.<\/p>\n

Security was tight around the courtroom, with police carrying out body searches of the public.<\/p>\n

The Boeremag — Afrikaans for “Boer Force”, a reference to the descendants of the first Dutch colonisers — had planned to sow chaos through bomb blasts then take over military bases, replace the government with white military rule and chase all blacks and Indians from the country.<\/p>\n

Far-right organisation the Boer Republicans bussed in its members to support the defendants during sentencing.<\/p>\n

“I support them 100 percent because their plan was right,” the group’s leader Piet Rudolph told AFP.<\/p>\n

“Our people are being oppressed, we are servants, and people should revolt against that.”<\/p>\n

The sentences are expected to be handed down on Tuesday. – AFP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A South African court began sentencing Monday 20 right-wing extremists convicted of high treason for a plot to kill Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of the country. The “Boeremag” organisation had planned a right-wing coup in 2002 to overthrow the post-apartheid government. The trial lasted almost a decade until the organisation’s members were convicted … Continue reading “Boeremag accused to be sentenced”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":11353,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[704,706,560,7172,1523],"class_list":["post-11352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-south-africa","tag-boeremag","tag-eben-jordaan","tag-nelson-mandela","tag-piet-rudolph","tag-sentence"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Boeremag.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11352"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11352\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11354,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11352\/revisions\/11354"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/11353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}