More trouble ahead for that champion of human rights, Judge Richard Goldstone.

According to Yediot Achronot, as a judge on the South African court of appeals in the 1980s-90s, he sentenced no less than 28 (!) black people to death, writing in one of his verdicts: "The gallows is the only deterrent for murderers".

He also sentenced four black people to flogging - and let off four white policemen who burst into the house of a white woman who was suspected of having sex with a black man (then a criminal offence).

His defence?

He apparently told Yediot that he was always against the death penalty (although that seems to contradict what he said at the time); that he never discriminated against black people (although the legal system was weighted against them); and that during the apartheid era, he had to obey the law.

Did he really? Was he forced to be a judge?

What his defence essentially amounts to is, 'I was just obeying orders....'

Full story in the weekend edition of Yediot.

(H/t Dani Wassner. See also Jerusalem Central.)