In a stirring opening statement that sealed his iconic status around the world, Mandela admitted to some of the charges against him while defending the ANC's actions and denouncing the injustices of apartheid.
On 12 June 1964, all of the accused were sentenced to life imprisonment.
Mandela spent the first 18 of his 27 years in jail at the brutal Robben Island Prison, a former leper colony off the coast of Cape Town, where he was confined to a small cell without a bed or plumbing and compelled to do hard labor in a lime quarry.