Peter Caselton
 Peter Caselton  (spook) | |
|---|---|
 | |
Peter Caselton (aka Peter Castleton) was an apartheid-era South African Police lieutenant who admitted carrying out the bombing in March 1982 of the ANC offices in London. Lieutenant Caselton claimed indemnity in 1996 for the incident and was granted amnesty two years later by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with eight others: John Adam, General Johannes Coetzee, Eugene de Kock, John McPherson, Roger Raven, James Taylor, Wybrand Du Toit and Craig Williamson.[1]
In 1997 Peter Caselton was crushed to death whilst repairing his car shortly before he was expected to testify at the TRC that Craig Williamson and Bertil Wedin were involved in the murder of Olof Palme.[2]
Accomplice to bombing
A squad of South African policemen were almost apprehended by the Metropolitan Police while on their way to bomb the African National Congress offices in London in 1982, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were told.
This emerged during testimony by Roger Raven, one of eight SA policemen who took part in the bombing, which they described as a symbolic attack aimed at demoralising the ANC. Raven, who was applying for amnesty for his role in the attack, admitted assembling the bomb that demolished a section of the building in White Lion Road. He said that while he and Peter Castleton were driving with the bomb on the back seat of a hired vehicle, they were stopped at a police roadblock. He said a policewoman asked Castleton to state the car registration number:
- "Fortunately for us he was able to do that and she waved us on," Raven said.
Castleton has since died in a motor vehicle accident.
Raven, who entered the United Kingdom under the false name of Jeremy Raven and has since been called Jerry, said the bomb was planted and he later heard that it had exploded. Raven's testimony contradicted estimates made by British police that the bomb had been about 4,5kgs. He said he used four 250g blocks of explosives in the bomb, which he detonated with timing device made from an alarm clock.
Raven said the original plan had been to bomb both the offices of the ANC and the SA Communist Party, for which he would have used equal amounts of explosives. However, the idea to bomb the SACP offices was abandoned because it was in an urban area and the full kilogramme of explosives was used on the ANC offices.
The other policemen who have applied for amnesty for the London bombing are Craig Williamson, Eugene de Kock, John Adam, James Taylor and Vic McPherson. Like Castleton, the man who led the squad, Brigadier Piet Goosen, has also since died.[3]
Palme murder accusation
| Accusing Bertil Wedin of Palme murder |
In a YouTube video uploaded in July 2015 the former South African special agent, Peter Caselton, denied the claim that Olof Palme was killed by Anthony White, instead accusing Bertil Wedin of the murder:
- "That would be guess work, it's up to the Swedish police to interview Bertil Wedin and they can form an opinion. I have just spoken to him in connection with the fact that Anthony White is not a person that was involved in the Palme murder and this was relayed to me last Sunday by Eugene de Kock in the prison and I feel that is unnecessary for people to embark on wild goose chases when it's going out on a tangent. I feel that the senior members of the SADF have to crawl out from under the stands that they're hiding under and start taking the blame like any other military organisation and any other senior officers with any self esteem or pride would have done a long time ago."[4]
Related Document
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:Olof Palme - The Man Who Played With Fire | book review | 2020 | Simon Matthews | Bernt Carlsson, a colleague of Olof Palme’s and UN Commissioner for Namibia 1987-1988, died in the Lockerbie bombing on 21 December 1988. Carlsson's presence on Pan Am Flight 103 has been cited as the reason it was bombed. |
