The brutal death of anti-apartheid campaigner Ahmed Timol was allowed to go quietly unsolved in the interests of South Africa’s democratic reconciliation. But now more than 45 years after he fell from a 10th-floor window at a notorious regime security building and died, Timol’s case is being re-examined following a campaign to expose the truth led by his family. Timol, a 30-year-old activist with the then-banned South African Communist Party (SACP), was arrested in Johannesburg on the night of October 22, 1971. After being held in detention for five days, he was declared dead following his plunge from the blue-and-grey police headquarters onto the pavement below. Following an investigation by authorities at the time, the anti-apartheid activist was found by a judge to have taken his own life. Their verdict was not open to appeal. "Murder, in the view of the testimony given, is excluded and even considering it, is ludicrous... To accept anything other than that the deceased jumped ou...
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