The Dulcie September case, named after the anti-apartheid activist murdered in the heart of Paris in March 1988, will not be reopened, French justice decided on Wednesday, 34 years after the facts.
It’s one most mysterious criminal cases apartheid era. On March 29, 1988, two years before the fall of the racist regime in South Africa, Dulcie September, the representative in France of Nelson Mandela’s ANC party, was assassinated in the heart of Paris with six bullets to the head.
Immediately, all eyes turned to the Pretoria regime’s death squads. But four years later, in 1992, the French judicial inquiry leads to a dismissal and the family of Dulcie September, who has no children, does not appeal.
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In 2019, hoping to reopen the investigation, the victim’s family files a complaint, by arguing that this assassination is a crime of apartheid, therefore a crime against humanity, which is by nature imprescriptible.
But on Wednesday, the Paris court rejected this request, affirming that there was prescription and noting the fact that a remedy had existed in 1992 and that the family of the victim had not exploited it. So we may never know who killed Dulcie September. Last month, during the hearing before the Paris court, his family’s lawyer denounced a ” state matter ” and ” 34 years of denial of justice “.