JOHANNESBURG: A 23-year-old South African man was sentenced to life in prison on Thursday for the 2015 ax murders of his parents and brother in an affluent housing estate.
Henri van Breda appeared impassive as a judge sentenced him to three life sentences for the grisly killings of parents Martin and Teresa and brother Rudi in Stellenbosch, a scenic town in a wine-growing area near Cape Town.
Van Breda also received a 15-year sentence in the Western Cape High Court for the attempted murder of his sister Marli at the time of the attacks. She suffered severe head injuries in a bloody onslaught that Judge Siraj Desai described as “cold-blooded” murder.
“These attacks display a high level of innate cruelty,” Desai said. “The violence was excessive and gratuitous. It was intended to cause maximum harm.”
Defense lawyer Pieter Botha, who plans to appeal the conviction and sentencing, had suggested van Breda’s youth and status as a first-time offender should be mitigating factors in the sentencing. He also said his client could not show remorse because he maintains he is innocent.
While Desai recalled that a witness heard a loud argument in the van Breda home for several hours on the night of the killings, he told Henri van Breda that “we have no explanation for what you did” and that he had to be handed the “severest possible penalty.”
Van Breda also received a one-year sentence for obstructing justice after the court concluded that he inflicted injuries on himself to try to mislead police.
The van Breda family lived in Australia for some years before returning to South Africa, and the judge said Henri van Breda had enrolled at the University of Melbourne.
“Your future was not bleak. In fact, it was bright,” Desai told van Breda as he stood in the dock. “You had the support of family and, more importantly, they had the means to assist you in your future endeavors, and it seems to me they would have done so.”
South African gets life in prison for ax murders of family
South African gets life in prison for ax murders of family
‘Doomsday Clock’ moves closer to midnight over threats from nukes, climate change, AI
- At the end of the Cold War, the clock was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds
WASHINGTON: Earth is closer than it’s ever been to destruction as Russia, China, the US and other countries become “increasingly aggressive, adversarial, and nationalistic,” a science-oriented advocacy group said Tuesday as it advanced its “Doomsday Clock” to 85 seconds till midnight.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientist members had an initial demonstration on Friday and then announced their results on Tuesday.
The scientists cited risks of nuclear war, climate change, potential misuse of biotechnology and the increasing use of artificial intelligence without adequate controls as it made the annual announcement, which rates how close humanity is from ending.
Last year the clock advanced to 89 seconds to midnight.
Since then, “hard-won global understandings are collapsing, accelerating a winner-takes-all great power competition and undermining the international cooperation” needed to reduce existential risks, the group said.
They worry about the threat of escalating conflicts involving nuclear-armed countries, citing the Russia-Ukraine war, May’s conflict between India and Pakistan and whether Iran is capable of developing nuclear weapons after strikes last summer by the US and Israel.
International trust and cooperation is essential because, “if the world splinters into an us-versus-them, zero-sum approach, it increases the likelihood that we all lose,” said Daniel Holz, chair of the group’s science and security board.
The group also highlighted droughts, heat waves and floods linked to global warming, as well as the failure of nations to adopt meaningful agreements to fight global warming — singling out US President Donald Trump’s efforts to boost fossil fuels and hobble renewable energy production.
Starting in 1947, the advocacy group used a clock to symbolize the potential and even likelihood of people doing something to end humanity.
At the end of the Cold War, it was as close as 17 minutes to midnight. In the past few years, to address rapid global changes, the group has changed from counting down the minutes until midnight to counting down the seconds.
The group said the clock could be turned back if leaders and nations worked together to address existential risks.
