Court finds Man guilty of Mandela's death plot

THE mastermind of a white supremacist plot to assassinate Nelson Mandela and drive blacks out of South Africa has been found guilty of high treason after a trial that started almost a decade ago.
Mike du Toit is the first person found guilty in a trial that started nine years ago to prosecute the 2002 bombings, public broadcaster SABC said.
Witnesses testified that the Boeremag group also planned to assassinate Mandela, who became South Africa’s first black president in 1994 and acted as a unifying force after decades of white-minority rule.

The Boeremag also intended to shoot whites who opposed their vision of a racially pure nation.
Despite racial tensions in Mandela’s “Rainbow Nation”, radical white groups such as the Boeremag have very little support among South Africa’s five million-strong white population.  Prosecutors said Du Toit would be the first person found guilty of high treason in post-apartheid South Africa, a crime that used to carry a life sentence until capital punishment was abolished.
He is among 20 men facing charges ranging from murder to terrorism and high treason. The verdict has been read since Monday and is likely to continue for weeks at the High Court in Pretoria.
Known as the Boeremag - which is Afrikaans for “Boer Force”, referring to the descendants of the first Dutch colonisers - the men are said to be behind nine bomb blasts that shook the Johannesburg township of Soweto in October 2002.
Dozen of people were injured in blast and one person killed.
The bombings were said to be aimed at creating instability and panic to allow the group to unseat the ruling African National Congress (ANC) and chase blacks and Indians from the country.
In 2006, two of the men escaped from the Pretoria High Court but were later re-captured. Two of the accused have since died.
Source: The Guardian