Lawyer who defended Mandela in infamous 60s trial dies

Chaskalson (centre) was a member of the legal team that defended Mandela during the 1963-64 Rivonia trial. By Odd Andersen (AFP/File)

JOHANNESBURG (AFP) - Arthur Chaskalson, one of the lawyers who defended Nelson Mandela during the 1960s trial that saw that anti-apartheid icon sentenced to life in prison, died in Johannesburg on Saturday at the age of 81, the government announced in a statement.

The government did not provide an official cause of death, but the SABC public broadcaster said Chaskalson had been battling leukemia.

President Jacob Zuma lauded Chaskalson's "courageous role in the fight against apartheid, in our negotiated transition and the shaping of our constitutional democracy."

Following the fall of apartheid, Chaskalson became the first president of South Africa's new Constitutional Court in 1994.

Seven years later he became the country's chief justice and later was appointed to the UN-backed International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as a judge.

Chaskalson, who was white, was a member of the legal team that defended Mandela during the 1963-64 Rivonia trial that saw Mandela sentenced to life in prison.

"Arthur Chaskalson and... Nelson Mandela walked a long road together, from the Rivonia trial through to the advent of democracy in South Africa and beyond," Mandela's foundation said in a statement.

"Throughout his life Mr Chaskalson worked on the legal defence of opponents of apartheid" and in 1978 helped to establish the a legal resource centre that Mandela called "a legal voice for the voiceless, it said.