Former apartheid-era police officer Joao Rodrigues has submitted in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) in Bloemfontein that the National Director of Public Prosecution deliberately delayed to prosecute him.
Rodrigues’s legal representative, Senior Counsel, Jaap Cilliers argued that prosecution at this stage will infringe on Rodrigues’s rights.
Rodrigues is challenging the High Court in Johannesburg order which dismissed his application not to be prosecuted for the death of an activist Ahmed Timol that happened in October 1971.
Rodrigues applied for a permanent stay of prosecution after being charged with Timol’s murder in July 2018. This after the inquest into Timol`s death was re-opened.
Advocate Cilliers argues that the Ministers of Justice and Police were probably aware that he was also granted the presidential amnesty.
He told the court that Justice Minister Ronald Lamola was bound by that decision not to prosecute him and other perpetrators. Cilliers also argues that the prosecution was delayed deliberately and there was political inference.
“We submit that there’s not a court with a deal or submission that it was a systemic failure. It was a deliberate failure and it continued in an attempt to mislead the court subsequently they withhold very important information.”
The NDPP contends that Rodrigues’s case is dismissed with cost. Senior Counsel, Dawie Joubert for the NDPP argues that the ground raised by the appellant has no merits. He says the appellant failed to provide evidence that NDPP was playing delaying tactics on the case.
“In our submission, all the grounds raised by the applicant appellant has no merits. He did not persuade the court and we submit that even in this application for leave to appeal he cannot indicate that he will suffer trial prejudice.”
Senior Counsel, Advocate Pingla Hemraj for the Minister of Justice has refuted claims that the was any delay in prosecution.
“Just one point I would like to make Justice, the only reason the applicant appears to want further disclosure of political interference is that they might be a possibility of an agreement not to prosecute him. And our submission justice is that the only evidence against the applicant emanated from 2015 to 2017 when the inquest was reopened. So that answers their question as to why they would be any agreement not to prosecution as early as 2007.”
Judgment has been reserved.
