Four of the six white policemen alleged to have set dogs on three black immigrants, in an incident that shocked South Africa, have pleaded guilty to all three charges laid against them.
The four pleaded guilty to charges of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm, attempting to defeat the ends of justice and corruption, court officials said.
The four accused are Jacobus Petrus Smith, 31, Lodewyk Christiaan Koch, 32, Robert Benjamin Henzen, 32, and Eugene Werner Truter, 28. The other two who pleaded not guilty were Nicolaas Kenneth Loubser, 27 and Dino Guitto, 27. Court officials said they would undergo a separate full trial. The four guilty policemen could be sentenced as early as this week. Unlike previous court appearances, there were no protests inside or outside the court and the six policemen did not require protection from authorities. At the start of the hearing last November, furious protesters carried posters calling for "One settler, One Bullet".
The trial which has attracted domestic and foreign attention. The court adjourned briefly and proceedings were expected to resume later, officials said.
"There will be a lot of interest in this case and it will be examined closely," said Gareth Newham, an analyst at the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation. "It is a classic example of racism and the abuse of power."
The video showed three men later identified as illegal Mozambican immigrants apparently being taken in turn from a police van in an open field. Victims repeatedly savaged
German shepherd dogs were encouraged to maul them about the face, limbs and, in one case, the groin as the attackers laughed and the victims screamed for mercy.
The victims were repeatedly savaged by four police dogs and were beaten when they tried to fend them off. They were filmed by one of the policemen in what one man described in a comment to the camera as a training exercise. The video-taped torture shocked South Africa when it was aired last year by the public broadcaster, which had obtained footage of the incident. It triggered a national debate about the nature of post-apartheid change. The tape was allegedly made in 1998 and was reported to have been shown at police parties.
The footage has evoked memories of the video-taped beating of black motorist Rodney King in 1991 in Los Angeles at the hands of white policemen after a high-speed chase.
Three of the South African accused, who have all been out on bail, have since resigned from the police force. The others have been suspended pending the outcome of the trial.
Analysts say the incident has thrown the spotlight on racism and police brutality, twin legacies of white-minority rule which ended in 1994. Analysts say while the police force has made major strides in racial integration, it has a long way to go before it sheds all of the racist baggage it carried during the apartheid era.
The Independent Complaints Directorate, which monitors police, says 687 suspects died in custody or during an arrest in the year to end-March 2001, six more than in the same period the previous year.
But South Africa has one of the world's highest rates of violent crime, fueled by poverty, and around 200 officers are murdered each year. In 1999, 10 white policemen were cleared of wrongdoing after they stood by while two of their colleagues beat black suspects in an assault filmed by the British Broadcasting Corporation. The two, who beat a car hijacking suspect injured in a crash, were fined.
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