Africa-Press – Namibia. A FORMER magistrate whose judicial career came to a sudden halt when she was suspended in January 2016 has now been sentenced to an effective prison term of two-and-a-half years, after she was convicted on two criminal charges in the Windhoek Regional Court.
Ex-magistrate Hileni Kavara’s trial before magistrate Elvis Mwilima ended on Friday with her being sentenced to 18 months’ imprisonment on a charge of defeating or obstructing the course of justice and to a prison term of 18 months on a count of corruptly using a false document. Mwilima ordered that six months of the sentence on the second charge should run concurrently with the sentence on the first count.
Kavara (37) was suspended from her position as a magistrate in January 2016 – a month after she had made a false entry on the official record of a case in which her then boyfriend was facing a charge of dealing in cocaine.
She made the change to his case record in an attempt to prevent his bail deposit of N$50 000 from being forfeited to the state, after the bail deposit had been provisionally forfeited when he failed to appear in court in November 2015.
Kavara made a backdated entry on his case record and reinstated his bail on 11 December 2015, after she had complained to a prosecutor that she had provided the money deposited to have him released on bail.
Before her then boyfriend absconded, Kavara also warned a prosecutor that he planned to flee and tried to have his bail cancelled. Following her suspension, Kavara was arrested and criminally charged in March 2017. She was released on bail in an amount of N$2 000 after her first court appearance in connection with the case.
Kavara, who resigned from her post after her suspension, denied guilt on the charges when her trial started in the Windhoek Regional Court near the end of March this year. Mwilima found her guilty on Thursday last week.
He noted during her sentencing that the court was informed Kavara, who is the mother of three children, has been unemployed since her resignation. Having depleted her own financial resources, she is now depending on her siblings for an income, the court was also told.
Mwilima further remarked that in the position Kavara held, she should have known it was her duty to uphold the law and that once an order for the forfeiture of bail had been made, the only way to reverse it was if the accused person, who failed to appear in court, turned up within 14 days and gave a reasonable explanation for his prior absence.
As it turned out, the N$50 000 bail deposit which Kavara tried to save ended up being forfeited to the state at a later stage, and Kavara did not get her money back.
Deputy prosecutor general Dominic Lisulo represented the state during Kavara’s trial. She was represented by defence lawyer Tjingairi Kaurivi during the last stage of the trial.
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