Political prisoner Shirley Gunn gave testimony at the reopened inquest into the late Imam Abdullah Haron’s death, on Wednesday. Picture: Chevon Booysen
Cape Town – “Medical services, prisons, police and even social workers, they were all complicit…”
This was part of the emotive testimony given by Shirley Gunn, member of the uMkhonto we Sizwe (MK) Ashley Kriel detachment unit, speaking of the colluding of forces during the apartheid era.
Gunn was one of three political prisoners who gave testimony at the reopened inquest hearing into circumstances leading to the death of the late Imam Abdullah Haron.
The three detailed how they had gone through extensive amounts of torture by the Security Branch (SB) at the time, particularly the “evil” Johannes “Spyker” van Wyk.
Gunn detailed a torture tactic used on her, which was having the cries of her baby play while being interrogated for many hours by the Culemborg police station on the Foreshore.
She had given birth to her son, Haroon-Gunn Salie, while in the underground, and said this added to the psychological torture she suffered.
“I was subjected to psychological torture and various threats, including spending my life behind bars if I refused to co-operate. I didn’t co-operate,” said Gunn.
Gunn said during a gruelling interrogation, SB officers came in with a warrant for her baby’s arrest.
“I told them ‘you can’t abduct my child. What has he done’? They pulled him from my arms, and I had to watch his abduction,” Gunn recalled.
Her baby had been separated from her for eight days during which another torture tactic, playing her baby’s cries to her before being interrogated, to force her to co-operate. Following an urgent court application, Gunn’s baby son was returned to her custody, while she remained in detention.
“I must add that Spyker van Wyk was infamous. He was ruthless in his interrogation and feared by detainees, hence his nickname ‘Spyker’. Spyker is Afrikaans for nail and he was given this nickname because he reputedly drove metal nails into the nails of those he interrogated, resulting in extreme pain.
“Many political detainees experienced his cruelty and brutality, and he was also associated with the killings of political detainees, such as Imam Haron.
“The threat that Van Wyk would be brought into my interrogation was made often and the security policemen made statements such as ‘you know what he did to Imam Haron’ or ‘he killed the Imam’ or ‘he took out the Imam’, insinuating that he would do the same to me,” Gunn said.
The inquest continues.
Cape Times