JANUSZ WALUS, who murdered anti-apartheid icon Chris Hani in a racially motivated attack in 1993, received a hero’s welcome in his native Poland on Saturday after being deported from South Africa.

Having spent almost 30 years in prison after his death sentence for the Communist Party leader’s murder was commuted, Mr Walus was greeted by several Polish extremists, including one of the leaders of the far-right Confederation alliance, whose international liaison officer recently spoke at the conference of the similarly extreme Homeland Party in Britain.

Mr Walus conspired with South African Conservative Party MP Clive Derby-Lewis to assassinate Hani as the ANC was about to come to power under Nelson Mandela, after the overthrow of the racist apartheid regime. 

The killers hoped that the murder of the inspirational Hani would trigger civil war in South Africa.

Derby-Lewis, who died in 2016 a year after being released from prison, was a friend of Gregory Lauder-Frost, who now organises the extremist organisation Traditional Britain Group. 

Mr Lauder-Frost had no connection with the plot to murder Hani, as by that time he was already serving a prison sentence in Britain for fraud against his employer, Riverside Health Authority, from whom he embezzled £100,000.

But one fascist with close British connections was deeply implicated in the assassination. Arthur Kemp, a journalist and informant for the South African security service, provided a dossier containing details of Hani’s home to Derby-Lewis, used by he and Mr Walus to plan the murder.

Hani’s widow, Limpho Hani, objected to Mr Walus’s release from prison on Friday, saying she only knew of plans to release him a day before he was set free.

South African minister in the presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni said the decision wasn’t one the government had made, but they were adhering to the decision made by the Constitutional Court.