NPA petitioned to probe ex-apartheid govt official for role in Rwandan genocide
Advocacy group Open Secrets has been investigating Willem Ehlers' alleged involvement in the supply of arms during the 1994 genocide.
FILE: National Prosecuting Authority offices in Pretoria. Picture: Eyewitness News
JOHANNESBURG - Advocacy group Open Secrets has petitioned the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) to prosecute a former apartheid government official for his involvement in the Rwandan genocide 30 years later.
The group has been investigating Willem Ehlers' alleged involvement in the supply of arms during the 1994 genocide.
Ehlers was a member of the South African navy and apartheid president PW Botha’s secretary.
According to an investigation by Open Secrets, Ehlers pocketed over US$1.3 million for his role in the procurement of arms to aid the Rwandan genocide.
This was for a deal he allegedly brokered in June 1994, at the height of the genocide.
Now decades after a recommendation for his investigation, Open Secrets has approached the NPA.
The group's Abongile Nkamisa said: "In 1996, the International Commission of Inquiry on Illicit Arms flows to Rwanda recommended that the South African state investigate Ehlers and his company, Delta Arrow, for supplying arms to Rwanda."
Open Secrets said it would await correspondence from the NPA before deciding its next move on ensuring that Ehlers was prosecuted.