PRETORIA, Nov 3: White South African extremists made plans at a club two years ago to shoot down a US passenger jet over a black township near Cape Town, a court was told on Monday.

Police informer and former right-winger Johannes Coenraad Smit told the Pretoria High Court, where 22 members of the white right-wing Boeremag (Boer Force) organization are facing treason charges, that the men planned the attack while sipping drinks at the Teazers club, Pretoria, in Nov 2001.

Mr Smit said the attack was planned by the alleged leader of the group, Mike du Toit, his brother Andre and a third unnamed right-winger.

“Mike du Toit said there was a plan to blow up an American Boeing at Cape Town International Airport,” Mr Smit told the court. He said: “He (Du Toit) said the aeroplane flew low over Khayelitsha (township) on takeoff and that he could get a (surface-to-air) SAM 7-missile from someone.”

The men are facing 42 charges, ranging from terrorism to murder, related to a series of bombings committed in the predominantly black Johannesburg township of Soweto last year and a plan to unseat the African National Congress (ANC)-led government.

Mr Smit testified that at a second meeting at the club, the men changed their plans about shooting down the aircraft as Du Toit “was afraid of negative publicity, because whites would also die in the act”.

He said the meeting was held with the Du Toit brothers at the club late one evening, followed a few days later by an informal visit to a next-door venue.

“We were there to discuss the coup plan, but the meeting was in a lighter vein. Everyone enjoyed a few drinks and Mike du Toit was accompanied by one of the ladies for a while. We did not really discuss anything,” Mr Smit told the court.

He said the men later discussed coup plans that included choosing a group of 15 men who would shoot at buses carrying black people in Pretoria.

“The purpose would be to draw a large concentration of police to the city centre so that small terror groups could go ahead with their orders to blow up electricity substations and pylons ... Mike du Toit coordinated all of the operations and orders,” Mr Smit testified.

Details of the coup plot were contained in a document that Mr Smit claimed to have received from Du Toit in June 2001.—AFP