Apartheid-era assassin Eugene de Kock will file an application in the High Court in Pretoria on Thursday to have his parole refusal set aside.

In August, Justice and Correctional Services Minister Michael Masutha announced that De Kock, who has been nicknamed “Prime Evil”, would have to wait another year before his application for parole was reconsidered, to allow the families of his victims to be consulted.

De Kock was in charge of a police “death squad” at Vlakplaas, outside Pretoria, and was arrested in mid-1994. He was convicted and sentenced in the High Court in Pretoria in 1996.

He was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment for six murders, including the Nelspruit Five, and to a further 212 years’ imprisonment on other charges. SAPA