JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AP) -- A South African policeman has been denied amnesty in the beating death of black liberation leader Steve Biko, a lawyer and an official said Saturday. The decision apparently leaves the officer open to criminal charges in a case that shocked the world and hastened the end of apartheid.
Former Detective Sgt. Gideon Nieuwoudt was denied amnesty because he and four other officers, who also are seeking amnesty in Biko's 1977 killing, did not admit to any crime, said George Bizos, a lawyer for Biko's family.The five officers testified before South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission last year that Biko tried to attack one of his interrogators while in custody in Port Elizabeth.
The officers say they tackled the 30-year-old Biko and accidentally slammed his head against a wall. He was then taken in a police van, naked and bleeding, on a 750-mile trip to a prison in Pretoria, where he died of brain injuries on Sept. 12, 1977.
Biko's message of black pride in the mid-1970s appealed especially to youths in South Africa's townships.
For many supporters, his death made him a martyr in the struggle against apartheid, sparking an outcry at home and abroad and spurring activism that contributed to the end of white-minority rule. It inspired the movie "Cry Freedom," with Denzel Washington.
The ruling by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's amnesty committee was made on Dec. 15 but had not been made public because it came as the Christmas holidays began.
Commission spokesman Mdu Lembede confirmed that Nieuwoudt was denied amnesty. Lembede said he would not have any details until the commission's offices reopen Monday.
Bizos said rulings in the amnesty applications of the four other policemen have not been made, but he cast doubt on their prospects.
"They did not admit they committed a crime," Bizos said of the officers, speaking with The Associated Press. "By their own story they would not be entitled to amnesty."
Only those who confess to politically motivated crimes committed during apartheid are eligible for amnesty.