S. African Group Urges Amnesty in Biehl Slaying

CAPE TOWN, South Africa —  Black youths who beat and stabbed to death a white American student from Newport Beach three years ago deserve amnesty, the leader of the militant Pan Africanist Congress said Tuesday.

“They wrongly targeted and killed Amy Biehl. But misguided as the deed was, we support the amnesty applications of all those convicted and sentenced for the offense,” PAC leader Clarence Makwetu told the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

Biehl, a 26-year-old Fulbright scholar, was researching women’s rights in South Africa and conducting voter education classes to help blacks prepare for the country’s first all-race elections.

Linda Biehl, her mother, said Tuesday she has faith that the commission will not grant amnesty to the youths who killed her daughter.

“We know people on this commission,” she said. “Amy worked with people on this commission. There was a lot of anger by these people over what happened. [Retired Anglican Archbishop] Desmond Tutu told me what happened to Amy was an aberration. My feeling is definitely that they will make an appropriate decision.”

The commission, established by the new black-led government, is holding hearings around the country aimed at helping South Africans understand their past, finding ways to compensate victims of political crimes, and making recommendations to parliament on who should be granted amnesty.

Led by Tutu, the commission can recommend amnesty for anyone who confesses to politically motivated, apartheid-era crimes.

Each of the four men convicted in Biehl’s murder was sentenced last year to 18 years in prison. All have said they intend to apply to the truth commission for amnesty.

The youths, linked to the PAC’s youth wing, argued during their trial that they were caught up in the political militancy of the waning days of apartheid.

Makwetu told the commission that in the early 1990s, the apartheid regime was encouraging violence among blacks, and PAC members had started choosing targets without consulting the party’s leadership in Tanzania.

“A new pattern arose in the 1990s where civilians within the white community were attacked,” he said.

Biehl was slain while attempting to drive black friends home to Guguletu, an impoverished settlement outside Cape Town. A stone-throwing mob shouting the anti-white slogan “One settler! One bullet!” pulled Biehl from the car, chased her down, beat her with bricks and stabbed her.

Political parties were appearing before the commission this week to give their versions of the country’s history. Leaders of the National Party, which oversaw apartheid for four decades, were to testify today. The governing African National Congress will make its submission Thursday.

The PAC was formed in 1959 when militants, arguing that blacks did not need whites to fight for their rights, defected from the ANC.

The Pan Africanist Congress believes too much power was left in the hands of whites after the elections, and continues to fight in parliament for black interests.