South Africa jails 20 white extremists in treason trial

Up to 20 members of a white extremist group have been jailed from five to 35 years in the country’s first post-apartheid treason trial.

Judge Eben Jordaan handed the sentences out in Johannesburg to end the decade-long trial. Some sentences were suspended due to time already served.

Members of the Afrikaner extremist group Boeremag, or white farmer force, last year were found guilty of treason for a plot to violently overthrow the government.

Some members were also convicted of culpable homicide and conspiring to murder for a thwarted plan to kill former president Nelson Mandela. The group also claimed responsibility for a series of bombs that killed a woman and caused damage throughout the South African township of Soweto in 2002.