Jail looms for South African neo-Nazi leader

Reuters/October 18,1999

Johannesburg -- A six-year prison term for the attempted murder of a black man loomed for veteran South African white supremacist Eugene Terre Blanche Monday after a court rejected his appeal against the sentence. "The Pretoria High Court denied his appeal. The sentence was upheld," an official at the Attorney-General's office in Pretoria told Reuters. Terre Blanche, leader of the neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), has 14 days to appeal the case to the highest court, the Supreme Court of Appeals, and would avoid going to jail during his appeal, a legal source said.

Terre Blanche's wife told public radio her husband's lawyers would appeal the case.

Terre Blanche, 59, was sentenced in June 1997 for trying to kill former employee Paul Motshabi, 27. The victim suffered severe brain damage when Terre Blanche beat him in 1996.

The right-winger was also found guilty of the serious assault of petrol pump attendant John Ndzima. The judge recommended that both sentences run concurrently.