Police admit setting dogs on blacks 'as exercise'

Four South African policemen today admitted setting dogs on three black men in a video-taped attack and claimed it was an exercise.

Jacobus Petrus Smith, 31, Lodewyk Christiaan Koch, 32, Robert Benjamin Henzen, 32, and Eugene Werner Truter, 28, said that the 1998 assaults were aimed at teaching inexperienced police dogs to attack on instruction.

Two other policeman have pleaded not guilty.

The video of the 1998 attack was apparently made by one of the officers. Broadcast on state television, it showed the police setting their dogs on three Mozambicans, punching them and yelling racial slurs.

The six men had been free on bail until the start of the trial, which began in Pretoria today.