Craig Williamson
Born1949 (age 74–75)
Johannesburg, South Africa
Allegiance South Africa
Service/branch Security Branch
Years of servicec. 1976 – 1992
RankMajor

Craig Michael Williamson (born 1949), is a former officer in the South African Police, who was exposed as a spy and assassin for the Security Branch in 1980. Williamson was involved in a series of events involving state-sponsored terrorism. This included overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations and propaganda during the apartheid era.[1]

Spy career

Infiltration

In the late 1970s, Craig Williamson had inveigled Lars Eriksson, director of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF) in Geneva, into employing him as deputy director and help in the award of IUEF scholarships to African students. He was thus able to infiltrate the banned African National Congress (ANC) and, at the same time, make high-level contacts in Sweden which provided most of the funding for the IUEF. Williamson's networking through prime minister Olof Palme's office in Stockholm put him in touch with a number of Palme's close associates including Pan Am Flight 103 victim, Bernt Carlsson, who had become secretary-general of the Socialist International in 1976 and was based in London until 1983.[2] In 1981, Williamson recruited the woman who would become South Africa's best-known female spy, Olivia Forsyth.

Dirty tricks

The same source accused Williamson of syphoning off IUEF funds to establish a dirty tricks operation in Pretoria known as "Long Reach" in order to target apartheid's opponents both in South Africa and abroad. This dirty tricks operation also involved arms trafficking.

Counter-intelligence

Again using IUEF funds, Williamson set up the South African News Agency to recruit and use journalists for apartheid South African counter-intelligence purposes.[3] Williamson also attempted to infiltrate the International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF), though he was successfully deflected by Phyllis Altman, general secretary of IDAF.[4] His cover was finally revealed by Arthur McGiven who reported his activities in the Observer.[4]

Bombing and burglary

PAC office in London

In 1982, a burglary took place at the Pan Africanist Congress office in London. Two suspects were arrested. One of them, a Swedish journalist, Bertil Wedin, was eventually acquitted by an English court. Wedin admitted, however, that he was working for South African intelligence and that he had been recruited by Craig Williamson. The other suspect, South African Defence Force Sergeant Joseph Klue had diplomatic immunity as a member of staff at the South African embassy in London and was ordered to leave the United Kingdom.

ANC office in London

Williamson applied for amnesty in 1995 from South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for bombing the London office of the ANC in March 1982. In the British House of Commons in June 1995, Peter Hain MP asked through the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, that the British police should interview and consider extraditing Williamson to stand trial for the London bombing.[5] The Home Secretary turned down Hain's request. Amnesty was eventually granted by the TRC to Williamson and seven others on 15 October 1999.[6] Following the TRC hearing, South African lawyer Anton Alberts commented to the "woza" news agency: "If you look at the Lockerbie disaster - this is very similar. I think Britain would like to see these guys are prosecuted in England even though they get amnesty here."

Kidnapping and assassination

Ruth Slovo

Williamson ordered the assassination of Ruth Slovo, who was an exiled campaigner for the Anti-Apartheid Movement, close friend of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme and the ANC author of a pioneering study of Namibia. She was also the wife of the South African Communist Party's leader, Joe Slovo. She was killed by a letter-bomb in Maputo, Mozambique on 18 August 1982.[7]

Mozambique

In January 1984, minutes of the apartheid State Security Council, chaired by Prime Minister P. W. Botha, recorded Craig Williamson as plotting the overthrow of the government in Mozambique.[8]

Jeanette and Katryn Schoon

In mid-1984 Craig Williamson mailed a letter-bomb which on 28 June killed Jeanette Schoon,[9] wife of Marius Schoon, and their six-year-old daughter Katryn, at the family's home in exile in Lubango in Angola. Both Jeanette and Marius Schoon were prominent South African anti-apartheid activists and members of the ANC. While in exile in Botswana some years earlier, the Schoons had broken[10] Williamson's cover internally within the ANC, several months before his public exposure in the UK, allowing the ANC leadership to attempt to manipulate Williamson covertly for their own purposes.

The Schoons' younger son Fritz, then aged three, witnessed the murder of his mother and sister at close hand; found wandering alone in the house, and severely traumatised, he developed epilepsy from which he never fully recovered. Following Williamson's application for amnesty for the killings, Schoon filed a civil suit against Williamson, seeking damages for his son. However, the suit was suspended pending Williamson's Amnesty hearing.

It has never been determined[10] whether the letter-bomb had been addressed specifically to Marius Schoon or to both him and his wife; Williamson claimed to his subordinate, the bomb-maker Jerry Raven, that the former was the case. In June 2000, a year after Marius Schoon died of lung cancer, TRC amnesty for this killing and that of Ruth Slovo was granted to Williamson,[11] despite Marius Schoon's earlier testimony[10] strongly opposing amnesty. Schoon had argued that the whole truth about the murder of his wife and daughter had not, as required, been revealed by Williamson, and that the murder of his wife and daughter had been carried out in revenge.[12]

Williamson's bomb-maker, Jerry Raven, testified:[10]

"I did not know who the letters were intended for. It was only after the death of Jeanette Schoon and their child and the congratulations from Mr. Williamson, that I realised that they had been the targets for one of the devices I had manufactured. On questioning Williamson about the Schoon incident he said that the letter had been intended for Marius Schoon but it served the[m] right. He alleged that the Schoons had always used their daughter as their bomb disposal expert. On requesting clarification he said that whenever they received suspicious parcels they would throw them in the back yard and let the child play with them until such time they deemed it fit to open them."

Other incidents possibly linked to Williamson

On 21 February 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme addressed the anti-apartheid conference Svensk folkriksdag mot apartheid (Swedish People's Parliament Against Apartheid) at the People's House in Stockholm, Sweden. A week later, Palme was shot and killed after attending the cinema with his wife, Lisbeth Palme. The subsequent Stockholm Police investigation into the murder was criticised for its lassitude and incompetence for not quickly solving the crime. Five days after Palme's murder, Swedish author and journalist Per Wästberg reported twice to the Swedish police that South African intelligence services must have been involved, but no action was taken by the police. Ten years later, Williamson was named in a South African court for Palme's murder, as were three others: Anthony White, Roy Allen and Bertil Wedin.[13][14] No South Africans were ever charged with the Palme assassination (nor was anyone else, but Christer Pettersson, who was convicted, then acquitted on appeal).

Propaganda

Williamson was one of the main collaborators with Peter Worthington in the anti-militant video The ANC method - violence which was distributed by Citizens for foreign aid reform throughout Canada in 1988.

In the summer of 1988 the US-produced film Red Scorpion was made on location in South-West Africa (Namibia). South Africa helped finance the movie and the SADF provided trucks, equipment as well as extras. The action-packed movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist guerrilla commander loosely based on Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA – the Angolan rebel movement – supported by both Washington and Pretoria. The film's producer, Jack Abramoff, was also head of the International Freedom Foundation (IFF). Established in Washington in 1986 as a conservative think-tank, the IFF was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation and, according to Craig Williamson, was designed to be "an instrument for political warfare against apartheid's foes". South Africa spent up to $1.5 million a year – until funding was withdrawn in 1992 – to underwrite Operation Babushka, the code-name by which the IFF project was known.

An article about the "enigma" Craig Williamson in the SA Sunday Times of 20 September 1998 entitled "The spy who never came in from the cold" concluded with the Williamson dictum:

I respect a person who's willing to die for his country, but I admire a person who is prepared to kill for his country.

In a television interview in early August 2001, Williamson told the BBC's Tim Sebastian in a defence of his actions during the apartheid era, that his actions should be contrasted against the background of the Cold War and were in support of the West. The NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999, he said, killed far more civilians than his "dirty tricks brigade" ever did.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Beresford, Belinda (29 May 2008). "Craig Williamson: Apartheid careerist". Mail & Guardian. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
  2. ↑ Nicholas Busch, FECL (28 February 1986). "FECL 47 (October 1996): PALME MURDER: THE SOUTH AFRICAN CONNECTION AND THE SWEDISH POLICE LINK". Fecl.org. Archived from the original on 10 September 2017. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  3. ↑ "Justice Home". Doj.gov.za. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  4. 1 2 "The International Defence and Aid Fund (IDAF)". South African History Online. 14 February 2013. Archived from the original on 18 September 2016. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  5. ↑ "House of Commons Hansard Debates for 22 Jun 1995". 17 January 2001. Archived from the original on 17 January 2001.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)
  6. ↑ "Justice Home". Doj.gov.za. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  7. ↑ "Amnesty granted to Ruth First's killers", Dispatch Online, 2 June 2000.
  8. ↑ "Media24 Digital/Digitaal". News.24.com. Archived from the original on 20 January 2002. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  9. ↑ "Jeannette Schoon and their daughter are killed by a letter bomb | South African History Online". Sahistory.org.za. 28 June 1984. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  10. 1 2 3 4 "On Resumption: 5th November 1998 - Day 4". Justice.gov.za. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  11. ↑ Brittain, Victoria. "Outrage over amnesty for apartheid killer". The Guardian. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  12. ↑ "SAPA - 18 Sep 98 - WILLIAMSON ACCUSED IN TRC OF KILLING SCHOONS OUT OF REVENGE". Justice.gov.za. 18 September 1998. Retrieved 18 March 2017.
  13. ↑ Billger, Ola (24 February 2014). "The Millennium author's theories concerning the murder of Olof Palme". Svenska Dagbladet.
  14. ↑ Drogin, Bob (27 September 1996). "Apartheid Spy Tied to '86 Assassination of Sweden's Palme". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 28 April 2023. [Eugene De Kock] said "Operation Long Reach"--the now-defunct South African military intelligence project headed by operative Craig Williamson--"played a role" in the murder of Palme, a staunch apartheid foe.
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