Dieter Gerhardt - Arrest, Trial and Subsequent Release

Arrest, Trial and Subsequent Release

Gerhardt's cover was finally blown by Soviet double agent Vladimir Vetrov (given the codename "Farewell" by France's DST intelligence service) He was arrested at his hotel in New York in January 1983 in a sting operation by the Federal Bureau of Investigation while he was taking a degree in mathematics at Syracuse University. The CIA interrogated him for 11 days, during which time he gave up one of his Soviet handlers, Vitaly Shlykov (codename "Bob"). Shlykov, who did not know that the Gerhardts had been arrested, was also arrested on 25 January when he travelled to Zurich under the alias "Mikhail Nikolayev" for a pre-arranged meeting with Ruth Gerhardt. He had in his possession $100,000 in cash that he intended to pay her; he did not disclose his real identity to Swiss authorities, and was sentenced to three years imprisonment for spying.

P.W. Botha announced Gerhardt's arrest to the world in a special press conference on 26 January 1983. Following his deportation to South Africa, Gerhardt and his wife were tried in camera in the Cape Town Supreme Court, with the prospect of a death sentence being handed down for high treason. In his trial, Gerhardt stated that the repulsion he felt towards his father's right-wing political beliefs drove him to fight apartheid in serving the USSR. According to Gerhardt, he deliberately attempted to sow confusion in the trial by stating in his defence that he had spied for an unnamed third country that was not hostile to South Africa. His first wife described him as a "traditional apartheid-accepting South African"; he had told her that he wanted revenge against the South African government for interning his father, a Nazi sympathizer, during World War II. Ruth Gerhardt claimed in her defence that she thought he was a double agent working for South Africa. Judge George Munnik sentenced him to life imprisonment in December 1983, while his wife Ruth received a 10-year sentence for acting as a courier. The judge said that he would have passed the death sentence on Gerhardt that the prosecution sought if the information he had passed to the Soviet Union had led to the death of a South African soldier.

Ruth Gerhardt served her sentence together with Barbara Hogan and other anti-apartheid dissidents. In 1988, she attempted to gain her freedom by renouncing violence, and thereby take advantage of an offer made by PW Botha to political prisoners like Nelson Mandela, however the request was turned down by Justice Goldstone.

Dieter Gerhardt was one of the imprisoned spies who was mooted for inclusion in a 1989 East-West prisoner exchange amongst a number of countries that did not materialise. In 1990 when FW de Klerk unbanned organisations such as the ANC and released political prisoners like Nelson Mandela, Gerhardt was not one of those who was freed. He was visited in prison on 22 January 1992 by a delegation from the ANC, who were seeking information regarding the SADF that may assist them in CODESA negotiations with the National Party government. Gerhardt was released in August 1992 following his application for release, political pressure in South Africa and an appeal by Russian premier Boris Yeltsin to South African President FW de Klerk when the latter visited Moscow after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Former Minister of Defence, Magnus Malan said that the former spy's release was a precondition to the restoration of diplomatic ties and the signing of a trade agreement between South Africa and the Russian Federation.

Gerhardt moved to Basel, Switzerland, following in the footsteps of his Swiss wife Ruth Gerhardt, who was released in 1990 following a request from the Swiss government. He stated upon his release that: "I did not feel like a traitor or someone who was betraying his colleagues. I was a political activist fighting the evil regime of apartheid. It was nothing personal." Gerhardt was subsequently granted amnesty in 1999 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and his rank of rear admiral restored.