Former President P.W. Botha ignored a subpoena to appear Friday before a commission investigating apartheid-era human rights abuses but avoided criminal charges on a technicality.
Commission chairman Desmond Tutu and Attorney General Frank Kahn said the subpoena was defective and therefore Botha had no obligation to honor it.They said a new subpoena, the third so far against the apartheid-era leader, was issued ordering Botha to appear at a Dec. 19 hearing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Botha, 81, was issued the defective subpoena for a hearing Friday regarding the State Security Council, the highest security body of the apartheid governments that Botha headed in the 1980s.
The commission is holding a special two-day hearing on the council to try to figure out who gave orders for routine killings and torture by police.
Under the law creating the Truth Commission, anyone refusing to obey a subpoena can be charged with contempt and punished with a fine and up to two years in prison.
"From our point of view the subpoena was legally defective," said Kahn, attorney general of Western Cape province. "The subpoena must specify the time and the date and the place. What was specified was only the date and the place."
Earlier, before announcing that the subpoena was defective, Tutu said that he intended to file criminal charges against Botha.
Tutu said Botha's lawyer, Ernst Penzhorn, had confirmed that Botha would not appear at Friday's hearing.
Botha has called the Truth Commission a "circus" and a witch hunt against apartheid leaders. He recently insisted he would never appear before it in a move intended to rally Afrikaners, the Dutch-descended white settlers who ruled during apartheid.
When issued a first subpoena earlier this year, Botha complained he had just undergone hip surgery and agreed instead to respond to written questions.
Penzhorn said answers to those questions would be given to the commission Friday afternoon, Tutu said. But Tutu said the commission also needed Botha to appear in person.
The commission has been unable to uncover the chain of responsibility for atrocities committed by apartheid security forces.