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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Tuesday, January 14, 2003

Former Mozambican President Dies of Murder: Report

The death of Mozambique's first president, Samora Machel, in an 1986 plane crash on South African soil, was not an accident but a murder, according to the South African Press Association ( SAPA) on Monday.


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The death of Mozambique's first president, Samora Machel, in an 1986 plane crash on South African soil, was not an accident but a murder, according to the South African Press Association ( SAPA) on Monday.

The report cited a revelation made by a former member of an apartheid death squad. The man is a Namibian national, Hans Louw, who was one of the most sinister of the apartheid regime's specialunits, dedicated to clandestine operations, up to and including murder, against the regime's opponents.

Louw is currently serving a 28-year term for murders.

Louw claims that he was part of a "clean-up team," whose job was to go to the crash site, and finish off Samora Machel if he survived the disaster.

In fact, the back-up team was not activated, because the original plan - to lure the plane off course by using a false navigation beacon -- worked, and Samora died on impact, as the presidential aircraft smashed into a bleak hillside at Mbuzini. Hesaid the false beacon was put in position by members of the apartheid regime's military intelligence.

Louw says he was also part of a squad that spied on prominent member of the Namibian Liberation movement, Anton Lubowski. He says he took part in a team that lured an Angolan military plane off course, again using a false beacon, causing a crash that killed key figures in the Angolan military in 1989.

Louw says he decided to confess to his killings after meeting an other jailed killer, Eugene de Kock, who was once the commanderof the Vlakplaas police death squad of the apartheid regime.


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