Special Report Transcript Episode 39, Section 5, Time 16:33

We expected to find, at this house, to find terrorists there who would be over nighting there. The target would be eliminated due to the fact that it was necessary to prevent the passage of terrorists across the border. These terrorists were at that stage responsible for hand grenade explosions, land mine explosions, death of innocent civilians and also other acts of terror. I later heard that an Indian man, his wife and two children had been killed in this operation or died in the operation. They were sleeping, they were shot; explosives were placed in the house. Yes, Willie Nortje now works for National Intelligence, he’s also a state witness and he was one of the people who went into the house. I personally would not have shot an innocent child there, but as I have already testified I didn’t go into the dwelling house, I was just securing the area around the house. Quite a while after the operation, I will say approximately three or four weeks afterwards, Willie Nortje came to me and handed me an envelope. All the other people involved also received such an envelope. If I can remember correctly there was R6000 in that envelope. He said it was for that operation and that main branch congratulated us on it. I regarded that as a reward for reason, for that specific operation, and for the reason that at that stage the National Party, the government of the day, would not officially have been able to give us medals for bravery for over border operations. We saw that we were not receiving medals for it but they gave us monetary rewards. It was the first and the last time. What bravery was there in shooting four civilians who were asleep? You thought you deserved a medal?

Notes: Capt Wouter Mentz Judge Wilson

References: there are no references for this transcript