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PRETORIA : South Africa's apartheid-era police minister Adriaan Vlok was handed a 10-year suspended jail sentence Friday after pleading guilty to the attempted murder of a leading black activist 18 years ago.

In a plea bargain reached with prosecutors, Vlok, his former police chief Johann van der Merwe and three other former security officials, all admitted seeking to kill Frank Chikane, currently a senior aide to President Thabo Mbeki, by having his clothes laced with poison.

At the time, Chikane was secretary general of the South African Council of Churches -- one of the bodies leading the fight against the racially oppressive apartheid system.

Last September, Vlok asked Chikane for forgiveness and washed his feet as an act of penitence.

Van der Merwe received the same sentence as Vlock, while the other defendants -- former major-general Christoffel Smith and colonels Gert Otto and Johannes Van Staden -- were given five-year suspended prison terms.

Under the agreement, a second charge of conspiracy to murder was withdrawn by the state.

The deal to avoid a custodial sentence was likely to anger support groups for the victims of apartheid atrocities who had wanted a full trial.

Members of one group demonstrated outside the court, waving placards that read: "No amnesty behind closed doors".

A rival protest by members of an Afrikaans civil rights group, Afriforum, demanded that ruling African National Congress (ANC) leaders accused of atrocities in the 1980s also be brought to justice.

"ANC leaders are not above the law," read one banner.

The decision to press charges against the 70-year-old Vlok had been controversial.

There have been few prosecutions for crimes committed during the apartheid era. The most high-profile case so far resulted in the acquittal of Wouter Basson for offences arising from his tenure as head of the National Party government's chemical and biological warfare programme.

Some South Africans feared Vlok's prosecution may open the door to action against other individuals who failed to get amnesty from a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) set up by the country's first black president, Nelson Mandela, to probe apartheid-era atrocities.

The commission granted immunity from prosecution in return for full disclosure of politically motivated actions.

Vlok was one of few senior National Party officials to appear before the TRC, but he did not ask for immunity for Chikane's poisoning.

F.W. De Klerk, the last president under white minority rule who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in bringing apartheid to an end, has warned against a witch hunt against former security force members.

"We should be extremely careful about setting about a chain of events which will ... put this country into a new straight-jacket of prosecution and retribution," he recently told journalists.

Chikane said last month he had no doubt Vlok's statements of contrition were sincere but added that he believed prosecution was necessary to bring closure to victims of the whites-only regime.

- AFP