| Description: | apartheid hit squad leader dies
JOHANNESBURG Coetzee, a former commander of a covert police unit in apartheidera South Africa who confessed to involvement inside the extrajudicial killings of black activists, has died of kidney failure, a hospital said Thursday. He was 57. Coetzee had served as the leader of a state hit squad generally known as Vlakplaas that targeted activists who opposed white minority rule. He later switched his loyalty to the antiapartheid movement and was granted amnesty for his function inside the killing of African National Congress members in 1997, three years following the election of its leader, Nelson Mandela, as the country's first black president. Ineke Jonker, spokeswoman for the Life Wilgers Hospital in Pretoria, said Coetzee died on Wednesday. Even though Coetzee supplied information about the slaying of antiapartheid activists to investigators, his death leaves queries unanswered about a variety of 1980sera killings also as differing views more tha |