Outlook Weekend: Criminal Minds
The South African man who planted a bomb and now regrets it, the reformed armed robber who is now a champion rower and the undercover agent who got close to Escobar's cartel
Stefaans Coetzee was brought up in apartheid South Africa, by a leader of the white supremacist movement. In 1996, when he was still a teenager, Stefaans was part of a group that carried out a bombing which killed four people in a shopping district in the town of Worcester in the Western Cape. He went to jail, eventually rejected racism and began a long journey towards repentance and forgiveness. He's recently been released, having met and apologised to many of his victims.
In the late 1980s, Robert Mazur was an undercover agent taking on the organisation of one of the world's most notorious criminals. Colombian drug lord, Pablo Escobar, was far and away the biggest trafficker of cocaine into the United States and US customs were desperate to bring him down. Robert Mazur came up with a plan to gain access to the cartel, masquerading as a money launderer.
John McAvoy was brought up in London in a family with a big reputation in criminal circles. He first went to jail in his teens. It was while serving a long stretch for conspiracy to commit armed robbery that John discovered he had a surprising talent that would set him on a radically different course.
Image
Left: Stefaans Coetzee (Credit: Feed A Child)
Right: John McAvoy (Credit: John McAvoy)
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- Sun 21 Aug 2016 00:32GMT91热爆 World Service except Australasia & News Internet
- Sun 21 Aug 2016 07:32GMT91热爆 World Service except News Internet & West and Central Africa