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Stage Set for First Ruling in Caprivi Treason Assault Case
February 13, 2009
Werner Menges
The NamibianWINDHOEK: The first trial on assaults that Caprivi high treason suspects claim to have suffered at the hands of Police officers after being arrested in the wake of separatist attacks at Katima Mulilo in August 1999 was concluded in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday.
High treason suspects Kisko Sakusheka and George Liseho are claiming amounts of N$60 000 and N$370 000 respectively from the Minister of Home Affairs for allegedly being unlawfully arrested and assaulted by Police officers. Their case against the Minister, who at the time of their arrest and alleged assaults had been responsible for the Namibian Police, is the first of more than 100 similar claims by suspects in the Caprivi high treason case to have resulted in a trial in the High Court.
Other civil claims, likewise resulting from the alleged torture, assault and abuse of treason suspects by members of the Police after the secessionist attacks that rocked Katima Mulilo and the Caprivi Region at the start of August 1999, which had been set for trial in the High Court have all been settled out of court.
Judge Louis Muller reserved his judgement on the case of Sakusheka and Liseho yesterday, after hearing arguments from Legal Assistance Centre lawyer Lynita Conradie, who is representing the two men, and George Coleman, who is representing the Minister on instructions from the Government Attorney.
Coleman argued that the claims of both men should be dismissed. Conradie argued that they had proven that they were unlawfully arrested and assaulted. She conceded that an additional claim by Liseho, of having been unlawfully detained after his arrest, had not been proven. She suggested that it would be reasonable if the court ordered the Minister to pay Sakusheka between N$40 000 and N$50 000 in damages and Liseho between N$70 000 and N$80 000.
Sakusheka claimed that he was assaulted by Police officers after his arrest at Makanga, a village some 70 kilometres southwest of Katima Mulilo, on April 15 2000. He claimed he was punched with fists, struck with rifle butts and beaten with a sjambok at Makanga, and after being transported to the Katima Mulilo Police Station, was again beaten until he collapsed.
Liseho claimed he was first arrested on November 3 1999, assaulted by being beaten and sjambokked, and then released the next day. On March 2 2000, he was again arrested and again assaulted, with several of his teeth knocked out in the process and a gun pointed at his head and its barrel shoved into his mouth at one stage, Liseho claimed.
A claim by another suspect in the high treason case, Aggrey Makendano, against the Ministers of Home Affairs and Defence had been set to be heard together with the case of Sakusheka and Liseho, but Makendano's case was settled on Monday last week. Makendano had claimed a total of N$550 000 for alleged unlawful arrest and being assaulted by Police officers.
In the trial before Judge Muller, a succession of Police officers passed through the witness box to deny the claims that Sakusheka and Liseho had been assaulted.
"It can hardly be expected that a Police officer would admit to an assault on an accused. The consequences would be dire," Conradie commented on that issue in her arguments yesterday.
Although the arrests in March and April 2000 took place several months after the attacks of August 2 1999, the Police were still hurt and angry that some of their colleagues had been killed in the attacks, while the situation at Makanga also remained volatile, Conradie told the Judge. This case would not be the first where Police officers say they did not assault people while they in fact did, she argued.
Coleman pointed out that the testimony of both Sakusheka and Liseho differed from the claims they initially made when they filed their cases against the Minister.
Sakusheka told the court that a scar on his right ear was the result of the alleged assaults. However, according to a Magistrate to whom he made an alleged confession after his arrest, he told her that the scar was the result of a childhood injury. This should seriously undermine Sakusheka's credibility, Coleman argued.
He further commented that two Magistrates before whom Liseho made appearances after the assaults in which he claimed his teeth were knocked out and his jaw was badly injured, did not observe any injuries on him. Liseho was been a "fundamentally unreliable witness", Coleman charged.
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