Mandela's comrades recall trial

JOHANNESBURG (AP):

Three silver-haired men sat together and recalled a court case 50 years ago that rocketed their friend and fellow freedom fighter to fame. To one man in the group, that friend is simply 'Nel'.

To the rest of the world, he is Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize winner, South Africa's former president, and a man who spent 27 years in jail for a cause he told a court in 1964 that he was prepared to die for.

Mandela, hospitalised since June 8, remains in critical condition. A grandson, Ndaba Mandela, said yesterday that his grandfather is "very much alive" and responds when spoken to, though he is on life support in the form of mechanical ventilation. Mandela turns 95 on July 18.

Tomorrow marks the 50th anniversary of an event known in South African history as the Raid on Liliesleaf, a simple home in a Johannesburg suburb of Rivonia that served as the nerve centre of activists seeking to overturn the white racist rule of South Africa's apartheid era. Those arrested in the raid were charged with sabotage. Mandela had already been convicted of separate charges and was later tried and sentenced with those from Liliesleaf.