Former security branch police officer Joao Rodrigues will be back in the High Court in Johannesburg on Friday morning, in connection with the 1971 murder of anti-apartheid activist Ahmed Timol.
This is after a 1972 inquest ruling that Timol had committed suicide by jumping from the 10th floor of the then John Vorster Square Police Station was reversed in the re-opened 2017 inquest. Judge Billy Mothle found that Timol died at the hands of the security branch police.
Rodrigues is facing charges of murder and defeating the ends of justice. He is currently out on bail of R2000. Rodrigues has since taken his application for permanent stay of prosecution to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein after it was dismissed in the High Court in Johannesburg. The nephew of Ahmed Timol, Imtiaz Cajee expects the criminal case to not commence.
“It’s expected that a criminal case will not commence because his legal team has petitioned the Supreme Court of Appeals in Bloemfontein, this is in terms of a permanent stay of prosecution that they brought to the full bench of the South Gauteng High Court last year, which dismissed his application. Obviously, we now await a date of the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein, to listen to legal arguments from his legal team, and once that is concluded, we expect to know if the decision does not go in his favour, Rodriguez and his legal team will then take the matter to the Constitutional Court in Braamfontein.”
In the video below, Joao Rodrigues’ defence team asks for permanent stay of prosecution
