Craig Williamson

Infiltration

In 1976 Williamson "fled" the country (pretending to be a dissident) for Botswana, where he met the head of the International University Exchange Fund [sv] (IUEF), Lars-Gunnar Eriksson [sv], and persuaded him to employ him as deputy director to help awarding 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.

The ANC debriefed Williamson in 1977. He then took up his position in Geneva in 1977, and, via the ANC, secretly channelled funds to anti-apartheid organisations in Southern Africa through various agents, who included his sister. Using IUEF funds, he infiltrated the South African News Agency to recruit and use journalists for apartheid South African counter-intelligence purposes. He also attempted to infiltrate the International Defence and Aid Fund, but was successfully deflected by general secretary Phyllis Altman. Eventually, by 1979, financial problems hit the IUEF, and Williamson tried to blackmail Erikson to prevent his exposure as a spy. However, Arthur McGiven, journalist at The Guardian and Observer, unmasked him in 1980.

Williamson returned to South Africa, where he continued to work for the Security Branch

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.^{[citation needed]} The other suspect, South African Defence Force Sergeant Joseph Klue had diplomatic immunity as a member of staff at the South African embassy in London and was ordered to leave the United Kingdom.

ANC office in London

Williamson applied for amnesty in 1995 from South Africa'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."^{[quote needs citation]}

Ruth Slovo

Williamson ordered the assassination of Ruth Slovo, 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.

Mozambique

In January 1984, minutes of the apartheid State Security Council, chaired by Prime Minister P. W. Botha, recorded Craig Williamson as plotting the overthrow of the government in Mozambique.

Jeanette and Katryn Schoon

In mid-1984 Craig Williamson mailed a letter-bomb which on 28 June killed Jeanette Schoon, who was the wife of Marius Schoon, and their six-year-old daughter Katryn, at the family's home in exile in Lubango in Angola. Both Jeanette and Marius Schoon were prominent South African anti-apartheid activists and members of the ANC. While in exile in Botswana some years earlier, the Schoons had broken Williamson's cover internally within the ANC, several months before his public exposure in the UK, allowing the ANC leadership to attempt to manipulate Williamson covertly for their own purposes.^{[citation needed]}

The Schoons' younger son Fritz, then aged three, witnessed the murder of his mother and sister at close hand; found wandering alone in the house, and severely traumatised, he developed epilepsy from which he never fully recovered. Following Williamson's application for amnesty for the killings, Schoon filed a civil suit against Williamson, seeking damages for his son. However, the suit was suspended pending Williamson's Amnesty hearing.

It has never been determined whether the letter-bomb had been addressed specifically to Marius Schoon or to both him and his wife; Williamson claimed to his subordinate, the bomb-maker Jerry Raven, that the former was the case. In June 2000, a year after Marius Schoon died of lung cancer, TRC amnesty for this killing and that of Ruth Slovo was granted to Williamson, despite Marius Schoon's earlier testimony strongly opposing amnesty. Schoon had argued that the whole truth about the murder of his wife and daughter had not, as required, been revealed by Williamson, and that the murder of his wife and daughter had been carried out in revenge.

Williamson's bomb-maker, Jerry Raven, testified:

"I did not know who the letters were intended for. It was only after the death of Jeanette Schoon and their child and the congratulations from Mr. Williamson, that I realised that they had been the targets for one of the devices I had manufactured. On questioning Williamson about the Schoon incident he said that the letter had been intended for Marius Schoon but it served the[m] right. He alleged that the Schoons had always used their daughter as their bomb disposal expert. On requesting clarification he said that whenever they received suspicious parcels they would throw them in the back yard and let the child play with them until such time they deemed it fit to open them."