The reopened inquest into the death in detention of anti-apartheid activist and dentist Hoosen Haffejee, in security police custody in 1977, has found that it was not suicide and that the four surviving police officers and an informant face charges.
Handing down his ruling in the Pietermaritzburg High Court, Judge Zaba Nkosi says security branch officers James Taylor and Petrus du Toit were primarily responsible for Haffejee’s death.
It set aside the findings of a 1978 inquest which found that the 26-year-old dentist hanged himself in a police cell.
Judge Nkosi found that Haffejee died of cardiac arrest either while he was being tortured, or when the police strangled him with his own pants in the cell to stage the suicide.
The video below is reporting on the reopening of an inquest into Hoosen Mia Haffejee’s death:
