130 Namibians captured by SA forces in Angola in 1978 are still being held under conditions which clearly contravene the Geneva Conventions relating to the treatment of prisoners of war. The prisoners have been detained incommunicado without charge or trial for well over a year and according to reports have been subjected to physical maiming and other forms of brutality.
The Namibians concerned are victims of the SADF's bombing raid on Kassinga refugee camp in southern Angola in May 1978. According to the South Africans about 200 prisoners were brought back to Namibia, of whom 68, including a number of Angolans, were released within a few weeks.
In May 1979 the names of 130 of those prisoners of war still in detention were made available to the UN Secretary General by the President of the UN Council for Namibia. The prisoners are believed to be detained under Section Six of the Terrorism Act in what amounts to a concentration camp at Hardap Dam, near Mariental in the south of Namibia. They have been denied access to lawyers. An eye witness account from two persons who were detained in the camp for a short period states a number of the detainees have had limbs severed from their bodies, many of them have had eyes and ears removed while others bear scars and burn marks from torture.
The inmates of Hardap Dam are further reported to be required to do hard labour such as digging, road construction and felling trees. During the December 1978 elections in Namibia, a number of them were brought out of the camp temporarily and forced to denounce SWAPO and urge people to vote.
40 of the detainees are believed to have since been transferred to Gobabis prison where they were however separated from the AG26 detainees.
Previous evidence that the Kassinga prisoners were tortured on being brought back to Namibia has been reported in FOCUS.
The SA Minister of Foreign Affairs Mr. Roelof Botha, has denounced SWAPO's allegations about Hardap Dam and other detention centres as "wild untruths". Two international organisations, Amnesty International and the International Commission of Jurists, have been requested by SWAPO to send a team of lawyers to Namibia to investigate allegations of brutality and torture of prisoners.
