A self-confessed white supremacist who went on a shooting rampage against blacks in the capital was given the death sentence on eight murder charges Thursday.
Former policeman Barend Hendrik Strydom, 23, who killed seven blacks in Pretoria Nov. 15 and an eighth a week earlier in a black township, had testified he would kill blacks again. He showed little emotion as sentences were handed down.Declaring Strydom could not be rehabilitated, Justice Louis Harms of the Pretoria Supreme Court sentenced him to hang for each murder count and 30 years imprisonment for 16 counts of attempted murder and one count of pointing a firearm.
Police with German shepherd guard dogs kept a peaceful crowd of a few hundred blacks waiting for the verdict in a park across the street as Strydom was led out a side door of the courthouse, bundled into a truck and whisked to death row at Pretoria Central Prison.