EX-COLONEL IN SOUTH AFRICAN POLICE GETS 2 LIFE SENTENCES.

Byline: Suzanne Daley The New York Times

Saying many of the defendant's actions had been cruel, calculated and without any sympathy for the victims, a South African judge Wednesday sentenced the former head of a notorious police assassination squad to two life sentences and more than 200 years in jail.

The harshness of the sentence against the former police colonel, Eugene de Kock, could assist the country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which is trying to uncover details of the thousands of murders, disappearances and tortures that occurred under the former white-led government.

De Kock's life sentences, the maximum under South African law, could give pause to many others who participated in atrocities but, emboldened by the acquittal this month of former Defense Minister Magnus Malan on murder charges, were prepared to take their chances with the legal system rather than confess and seek amnesty from the commission. South Africa abolished capital punishment under its post-apartheid Constitution.

De Kock's fate has been closely watched here as he is thus far the highest-ranking official to be convicted of apartheid-era crimes. His 20-month trial offered a grim picture of the work his unit - known as Vlakplaas after its headquarters on a farm outside Pretoria - carried out. In August, he was convicted of 89 charges, ranging from fraud to six counts of murder.

Trial testimony revealed details of some infamous political killings, such as the unit's role in the 1991 murder of Bheki Mlangeni, a human rights lawyer whose head was blown off by a cassette player with explosives in the earphones.

Mlangeni was sent the cassette player inadvertently; it was meant for someone else. De Kock was apparently indifferent to the mistake, on the grounds that Mlangeni ``was ANC too.''

The African National Congress, apartheid's most powerful foe, now controls the South African government.

A witness in another incident described how de Kock split one victim's head with a shovel after a gun misfired twice.

In a three-hour preamble to the sentencing, Judge Willem van der Merwe said what he had heard filled him with horror. He pointed out, for instance, that one of de Kock's victims - badly beaten and knowing he was going to die - had to endure hours in a car as he was taken to Swaziland to be killed.