Craig Williamson

Major Craig Williamson was in charge of 'target selection'

Craig Michael Williamson (born 1949, Johannesburg) is a former South African police major, exposed as a spy in 1980, who was involved in a series of state-sponsored overseas bombings, burglaries, kidnappings, assassinations and propaganda during the apartheid era.

Having admitted carrying out the crimes, Craig Williamson applied for and was granted amnesty by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission for the 1982 bombing of the ANC office in London, and for the murders of Ruth First in 1982 and Marius Schoon's wife and daughter in 1984.

Although no charges have been brought against him, Williamson is alleged to have been responsible for the February 1986 murder of Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme, for the October 1986 plane crash which killed President Samora Machel of Mozambique and for targeting UN Commissioner for Namibia Bernt Carlsson on Pan Am Flight 103 on 21 December 1988.

South African "superspy"

Infiltration

In the late 1970s, Craig Williamson had inveigled Lars Eriksson, director of the International University Exchange Fund (IUEF) in Geneva, into employing him as deputy director and help in the award of IUEF scholarships to African students. He was thus able to infiltrate the banned African National Congress (ANC) and, at the same time, make high-level contacts in Sweden which provided most of the funding for the IUEF. Williamson's networking through prime minister Olof Palme's office in Stockholm put him in touch with a number of Palme's close associates including Pan Am Flight 103 victim, Bernt Carlsson, who had become secretary-general of the Socialist International in 1976 and was based in London until 1983.

Dirty tricks

The same source accused Williamson of syphoning off IUEF funds to establish a dirty tricks operation in Pretoria known as "Long Reach" in order to target apartheid's opponents both in South Africa and abroad. This dirty tricks operation also involved arms trafficking.

Counter-intelligence

Again using IUEF funds, Williamson set up the South African News Agency (SANA) to recruit and use journalists for apartheid South African counter-intelligence purposes. British journalists John Ashton and Ian Ferguson are believed to be SANA recruits.

Bombing and burglary

PAC office in London

In 1982, a burglary took place at the Pan Africanist Congress office in London. Two suspects were arrested. One of them, a Swedish journalist, Bertil Wedin, was eventually acquitted by an English court. Wedin admitted, however, that he was working for South African intelligence and that he had been recruited by Craig Williamson. The other suspect, SADF Sgt Joseph Klue had diplomatic immunity as a member of staff at the SA embassy in London and was ordered to leave the UK.

ANC office in London

Williamson applied for amnesty in 1995 from SA's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) for bombing the London office of the ANC in March 1982. In the British House of Commons in June 1995, Peter Hain MP asked through the then Home Secretary, Michael Howard, that the British police should interview and consider extraditing Williamson to stand trial for the London bombing. The Home Secretary turned down Hain's request. Amnesty was eventually granted by the TRC to Williamson and seven others on 15 October 1999. Following the TRC hearing, South African lawyer Anton Alberts commented to the "woza" news agency: "If you look at the Lockerbie disaster - this is very similar. I think Britain would like to see these guys are prosecuted in England even though they get amnesty here."

ANC office in Stockholm

In 1986, the ANC office in Stockholm was blown up. Williamson and Wedin were accused by a number of sources, but no charges were brought against them.

Target selection

In 1996, Craig Williamson was interviewed in advance of his amnesty hearing at the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. During the interview, Williamson confirmed that he served on President P W Botha's State Security Council and was in charge of 'target selection' of those individuals and groups who were considered a threat to the apartheid South African regime.

Ruth First

Williamson ordered the assassination of Ruth First, who was an exiled campaigner for the Anti-Apartheid Movement, close friend of Sweden's prime minister, Olof Palme, and the ANC author of a pioneering study of Namibia. She was also the wife of the South African Communist Party's leader, Joe Slovo. She was killed by a letter-bomb in Maputo, Mozambique on 18 August 1982.

Marius Schoon

Williamson addressed a letter-bomb to exiled anti-apartheid activist, Marius Schoon, in Angola but killed Schoon's wife Jeanette and daughter Katryn on 28 June 1984. In June 2000, TRC amnesty for this killing and that of Ruth First was granted to Williamson

Samora Machel

Minutes of the apartheid State Security Council in January 1984 recorded Craig Williamson as plotting the overthrow of the government in Mozambique. Two years later, President Samora Machel was killed on 19 September 1986 when his Tupolev airliner crashed in the Lebombo Mountains, near Mbuzini, South Africa.

Olof Palme

On 21 February 1986, Prime Minister Olof Palme addressed the Swedish People's Parliament against Apartheid in Stockholm. Seven days later, Palme was shot and killed after attending the cinema with his wife. The subsequent Stockholm police investigation into the murder was criticised for its lassitude and incompetence for not quickly solving the crime. Five days after Palme's murder, Swedish journalist Per Wästberg reported twice to the Swedish police that apartheid South Africa must have been involved, but no action was taken by the police. Ten years later, Williamson was named in a South African court for Palme's murder, as were three others: Anthony White, Roy Allen and Bertil Wedin. However, no South Africans were ever charged with the Palme assassination (nor was anyone else, save for Christer Pettersson, who was acquitted on appeal).

Palme assassination

Craig Williamson was interviewed in Pretoria on 23 April 1996. This is an extract:

Tor Sellström: There are also some people who have mentioned your name in connection with the Palme assassination.

CW: It is fantasy.

TS: Is it plausible to talk about a South African link to the Palme assassination?

CW: I do not think that anybody here hated Olof Palme. If they were going to kill a head of state, hell, there are a lot of people before Olof Palme that would have been on the list. I really do not understand why Olof Palme. If they were prepared to do such a thing, I think that there would have been quite a few other targets. One day I saw a newspaper article which said that the murder was done by Koevoet under my command and that we had camped in the forests outside Stockholm in winter. Some journalist asked me and I said:

"Yes, we actually went overland from Africa with casspirs, all the way from Johannesburg. We drove in casspirs to Sweden. We did the operation and nobody saw us. Then he said: 'You are joking!' I said: 'Well, please, do me a favour.' They said that it was Koevoet people. I said that 'we were trained in desert warfare and now you tell me that we went and camped in the forests outside Stockholm in the middle of winter. That nobody saw us, that we crept into the city and killed the Prime Minister and left. And that nobody found one trace. That is really quite good."

Now there is some lunatic here in Pretoria who keeps telling the Swedes that I was the commander and that he bought the gun. He is a madman. He wants money.

ANC leadership

In 1987, plans for kidnapping the entire ANC leadership in London were uncovered. The thwarted operation was generally attributed to South African intelligence. Two Norwegians with a mercenary background and a British national were initially arrested, but never charged - a fact that at the time gave rise to newspaper allegations of possible involvement by British intelligence.

Godfrey Motsepe

On 4 February 1988, the ANC representative in Brussels, Godfrey Motsepe, narrowly escaped an assassin's bullet.

Dulcie September

On 29 March 1988, the ANC representative in Paris, Dulcie September, was shot and killed. Williamson's protégé – former SADF Sgt Joseph Klue – and South African spy, Dirk Stoffberg, were in the frame for both the Brussels and Paris shootings.

Bernt Carlsson

On 21 December 1988, Pan Am Flight 103 was sabotaged over Lockerbie, Scotland. Of the 270 fatalities, UN Commissioner for Namibia, Bernt Carlsson was the highest profile victim leading to allegations that Craig Williamson and the mercenary Lt-Col Eeben Barlow of South Africa's Civil Co-operation Bureau (CCB) were responsible for the Lockerbie Bombing.

David Webster

On 1 May 1989, social anthropologist and anti-apartheid activist Dr David Webster was assassinated by the CCB outside his house in Troyeville, Johannesburg.

Anton Lubowski

On 12 September 1989, SWAPO activist Anton Lubowski was assassinated in Namibia by the CCB because he was about to expose evidence of mass murder (Lockerbie Bombing) by the apartheid regime with potentially disastrous consequences for the West's vested economic interests in Southern Africa.

Propaganda

Craig Williamson was one of the main collaborators with Peter Worthington in the pro-apartheid video The ANC method - violence which was distributed by Citizens for foreign aid reform throughout Canada in 1988.

In the summer of 1988 the US-produced film Red Scorpion was made on location in South-West Africa (Namibia). South Africa helped finance the movie and the South African Defence Force provided trucks, equipment as well as extras. The action-packed movie was a sympathetic portrayal of an anti-communist guerrilla commander loosely based on Jonas Savimbi, the leader of UNITA – the Angolan rebel movement – supported by both Washington and Pretoria. The film's producer, Jack Abramoff, was also head of the International Freedom Foundation (IFF). Established in Washington in 1986 as a conservative think-tank, the IFF was in fact part of an elaborate intelligence gathering operation and, according to Craig Williamson, was designed to be an instrument for political warfare against apartheid's foes. South Africa spent up to $1.5million a year – until funding was withdrawn in 1992 – to underwrite Operation Babushka, the code-name by which the IFF project was known.

An article about the "enigma" Craig Williamson in the SA Sunday Times of 20 September 1998 entitled "The spy who never came in from the cold" concluded with the Williamson dictum:

"I respect a person who's willing to die for his country, but I admire a person who is prepared to kill for his country"

In a television interview early in August 2001, Williamson told the BBC's Tim Sebastian that the actions he took during the apartheid era had to be seen against the background of the Cold War and were in support of the West. The NATO bombing of Belgrade in 1999, he said, killed far more civilians than his dirty tricks brigade ever did.

External links

• Olof Palme and Williamson's exposure as SA spy
• TRC amnesty decision
• Ruth First
• Amnesty for the murders of Ruth First and Marius Schoon's wife and daughter
• Olof Palme addresses the Swedish People's Parliament against Apartheid
• 'Sabotage' of presidential aircraft
• Murder of ANC representative in Paris
• Propaganda video
• South Africa's illegal occupation of Namibia
• Warfare against apartheid's foes
• Eulogy for Bernt Carlsson
• Craig Williamson: Apartheid 'Superspy'

See also

• Executive Outcomes
• Dag Hammarskjöld
• The how, why and who of Pan Am Flight 103

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