A medical student at the University of Natal, he was co-founder and President of the all-Black South African Students Association, whose aim was to raise Black consciousness. Active in the Black People’s Convention, he was banned and then arrested on numerous occasions (1973–76). His death in custody, by falling from a window at police headquarters in Pretoria (officially suicide but widely regarded as murder), made him a hero and martyr. Following disclosures about his maltreatment in prison, the South African government prohibited numerous Black organizations and detained newspaper editors, thus provoking international anger. In post-apartheid South Africa, police officers giving evidence before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 1997 confessed to assaulting Biko but continued to maintain that his death was accidental. The Commission refused to grant them amnesty, but they have not been prosecuted.