South Africa reopens probe into death in custody of anti-apartheid leader Steve Biko

South Africa will open a new inquest into the 1977 death in police custody of iconic anti-apartheid figure Steve Biko, state prosecutors said.

The inquest will be officially registered in court on Friday, the anniversary of Biko's death nearly a half-century ago.

South African authorities have recently opened new inquests for other anti-apartheid leaders and activists who died in police custody or in suspicious circumstances during the brutal system of racial segregation.

They include the 1967 death of Nobel Peace Prize winner Albert Luthuli, the 1981 killing of lawyer Griffiths Mxenge and the 1985 killings of a group of activists known as the Cradock Four.

Black movement

Biko was at the forefront of the Black Consciousness Movement that emerged in South Africa in the 1960s in opposition to apartheid.

He was arrested by apartheid security forces in August 1977 near the town of Grahamstown on the south coast and was allegedly beaten and tortured while kept shackled and naked at a police station and later the local police headquarters by the notorious police Special Branch.

On Sept. 11, 1977, after more than 20 days in custody, he was loaded unconscious into a police vehicle and driven more than 1,000 kilometers (621 miles) to a prison hospital in Pretoria, where he died the following day in a cell, still naked and with his legs shackled. He was 30.

The cause of death was recorded as brain injuries and kidney failure. An inquest later that year that's been largely dismissed as a cover-up found that Biko banged his head against the wall in a scuffle with police officers.

Security exonerated