Albert Luthuli: South African court rules apartheid police assault killed Nobel laureate

The court sets aside the 1967 inquest that found that the anti-apartheid hero was hit by a goods train.

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An inquest held under the apartheid government concluded that Luthuli, the first African to win the Nobel Peace Prize, died after being struck by a freight train while walking along a railway line.

But activists and his family had long cast doubt on the findings, and South Africa's government reopened the case this year.

A judge on Thursday ruled that the anti-apartheid hero died as a result of a fractured skull and a cerebral haemorrhage associated with an assault. His family has welcomed the judgement.

Luthuli, who at the time of his death was the leader of the then-banned African National Congress (ANC), won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1960 for spearheading the fight against apartheid.