XPost: alt.fan.rush-limbaugh, alt.politics.democrats, talk.politics.guns   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: he-failed-to-repatriate-niggers@reparations.org   
      
   As well they should since liberals are not holding blacks accountable for   
   their behavior.   
      
   A convicted South African murderer who shot dead dozens of black men during   
   apartheid has told the BBC the police sanctioned his violence. Louis van   
   Schoor says others should share the blame for the killings he carried out as   
   a security guard. But in talking to BBC Africa Eye over the past four years,   
   he has also let slip horrifying details that raise serious questions about   
   his early release from prison.   
      
   Standing in the bedroom of a killer, your eyes naturally hone in on the   
   details.   
      
   Van Schoor’s bed is immaculately neat - the duvet so flat it looks like it   
   has been ironed. The air is heavy with the smell of cigarettes, their stubs   
   piled high in an ashtray. Strips of sticky paper are dangling from the   
   ceiling, writhing with trapped and dying flies.   
      
   The so-called “Apartheid Killer” has lost his teeth. His health is waning.   
   Following a heart attack, both his legs were recently amputated, leaving him   
   in a wheelchair, with painful scars. When his surgeon carried out this   
   procedure, Van Schoor requested an epidural instead of a general anaesthetic   
   - so he could watch them remove his legs.   
      
   “I was curious,” he said, chuckling. “I saw them cutting… they sawed   
   through   
   the bone.”   
      
   In speaking to the BBC World Service, Van Schoor wanted to persuade us that   
   he is “not the monster that people say I am”. His enthusiastic description   
   of his legs being removed did little to soften his image.   
      
   Over a three-year period in the 1980s under the country’s racist apartheid   
   system - which imposed a strict hierarchy that privileged white South   
   Africans - Van Schoor shot and killed at least 39 people.   
      
   All of his victims were black. The youngest was just 12 years old. The   
   killings occurred in East London, a city in South Africa’s windswept Eastern   
   Cape.   
      
      
   “He was a kind of vigilante killer. He was a Dirty Harry character,” says   
   Isa Jacobson, a South African journalist and filmmaker, who has spent 20   
   years investigating Van Schoor’s case.   
      
   “These were intruders who were, in a lot of cases, pretty desperate. Digging   
   through bins, maybe stealing some food… petty criminals.”   
      
   Van Schoor’s killings - sometimes several in a single night - struck terror   
   into the black community of East London. Stories spread through the city of   
   a bearded man - nicknamed “whiskers” in the Xhosa language - who made   
   people   
   disappear at night. But his shootings were not carried out in secret.   
      
   Every killing between 1986 and 1989 was reported to the police by Van Schoor   
   himself. But the release from prison of anti-apartheid leader Nelson Mandela   
   in 1990 signalled an end to this impunity. Ripples of change swept across   
   South Africa and, following pressure from activists and journalists, the   
   security guard was arrested in 1991.   
      
   Van Schoor’s trial was one of the largest murder trials in South Africa’s   
   history, involving dozens of witnesses and thousands of pages of forensic   
   evidence.   
      
   However, the case against him largely collapsed in court. At the time of his   
   trial, much of the apparatus of the apartheid system was still in place   
   within the judiciary. Despite killing at least 39 people, he was only   
   convicted of seven murders. He would go on to serve just 12 years in prison.   
      
   His other 32 killings are still classified as “justifiable homicides” by   
   the   
   police. Apartheid-era laws gave people the right to use lethal force against   
   intruders if they resisted arrest or fled once caught.   
      
   Van Schoor relied heavily on this defence to maintain his innocence,   
   claiming that his victims were running away when he killed them.   
      
   The BBC’s investigation into Van Schoor scrutinised the evidence underlying   
   these so-called “justifiable” shootings, delving deep into long-forgotten   
   police reports, autopsies and witness statements.   
      
   The investigation was led by Isa Jacobson, and involved years of archival   
   research in multiple cities across the Eastern Cape. The most important   
   files were scattered among hundreds of boxes, hidden away in vaults.   
      
   “The whole scale of it is just mesmerising,” she said. “It's astounding   
   that   
   any court of law could allow this to happen.”   
      
   Some of the most harrowing evidence Ms Jacobson found were witness   
   statements from people who were injured by Van Schoor, but survived. These   
   accounts contradict the security guard’s argument that they had been running   
   away when he shot them.   
      
      
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