Historical Dictionary of Terrorism Third Edition

PEOPLE AGAINST GANGSTERISM AND DRUGS • 527ties in 1995 when its members staged public marches on the homesof suspected drug dealers. This was followed on 4 August 1996 withthe vigilante murder of Rashaad Staggie, leader of the Hard Livingscriminal gang, whose body was then burned. This was followed bymore lynchings of suspected drug dealers and pornography vendors,but none of the group’s members were charged for those offenses.Eventually PAGAD expanded its targets to include moderate Muslims,synagogues, gay bars, and even South African police and judicialofficials investigating the group.PAGAD appears to have emerged out of the group Qibla, a smallradical Islamic group led by Achmad Cassiem who, inspired byIran’s Ayatollah Ruhallah Khomeini, founded Qibla in the 1980sto establish an Islamic state in South Africa. The memberships ofPAGAD and Qibla tended to overlap, and although PAGAD developeda much larger following than the 250 or so adherents of Qibla,it appeared that Qibla co-opted PAGAD’s larger following to itsown anti-Western stances and took over much of the leadership ofPAGAD. Consequently the mass media tended to treat the two groupsas if they were one group. The U.S. Department of State believed thatboth groups had ties to Islamic extremists in the Middle East.About 50 gunmen were associated with PAGAD, and both Qiblaand PAGAD operated mainly in the region of Cape Town. Qibla routinelycriticized U.S. policies toward the Muslim world and used stateradio station 786 to promote its own message and to mobilize Muslims.PAGAD was suspected of conducting 170 bombings and 18other violent acts in 1998 alone. Qibla and PAGAD were suspectedof having conducted the 25 August 1998 bombing of the PlanetHollywood lounge and dance hall in Cape Town, but no PAGADmember was ever prosecuted for this attack. The groups often usedthe front names Muslims Against Global Oppression (MAGO) andMuslims Against Illegitimate Leaders (MAIL) in their anti-Westerncampaigns. Qibla organized protests against the state visits of PresidentBill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999.In early 1999 the South African government issued emergencyantiterrorist legislation strikingly similar to that of the antiterroristlegislation of the apartheid regime directed specifically at Islamicradical groups such as these. Following a car bombing of the ObzCafé in Cape Town’s nightclub district on 4 September 2000, oneof the judicial officials investigating PAGAD, Judge Pieter Theron,