SOUTH AFRICA POLICE KILLINGS RISE
Oct 20th, 2009 by admin
South African police forces have shot and killed a total of 556 people in the last year in what is the highest annual toll in the country for a decade. The figure has been released by the country’s Independent Complaints Directorate following the death of a 30-year-old hairdresser who was mistakenly shot by police in Mabopane, near Pretoria, last week. The latest toll is almost double the 281 people killed by police in 2005. The figure is close to the level of police killings during the apartheid era, which ended in the early 1990s. In 1985 police are believed to have shot dead 763 people, the highest ever recorded number of deaths as a result of police action.
