Africa-Press – Namibia. TWENTY-SEVEN of the men convicted and sent to prison at the end of the marathon main Caprivi high treason trial six years ago received a reduction of three years in their sentences in the Supreme Court yesterday.
In a judgement announced by acting appeal judge Ernest Sakala, the court has dismissed the appeal which found 27 of the men guilty in the treason trial filed against their convictions.
The court – consisting of acting appeal judges Sakala, Jeremiah Shongwe and Moses Chinhengo – concluded that then High Court judge Elton Hoff correctly convicted the 27 men on a charge of high treason, nine counts of murder, and 91 counts of attempted murder in September 2015.
The court changed the sentences which Hoff imposed at the end of the trial in December 2015, though, by reducing the appellants’ effective prison terms by three years.
Hoff sentenced five leaders of a failed attempt to secede the former Caprivi region from Namibia to effective prison terms of 18 years each. Those sentences have now been reduced to 15 years each for the secession attempt’s leadership figures Geoffrey Mwilima, John Samboma, Bennet Mutuso, Thaddeus Ndala, and Alfred Tawana Matengu.
The effective jail terms of 15 years, which Hoff handed to 13 of the convicted men, whom he found to have been soldiers of the separatist Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) who carried out deadly attacks on targets at Katima Mulilo in the early morning hours of 2 August 1999, have now been reduced to 12 years each.
Effective prison terms of 10 years imposed on eight of the convicted men – found to have been supporters of a plan to take up arms in a bid to secede Caprivi from Namibia – and on one of the CLA attackers, Adour Mutalife Chika, who was a youthful 19 years of age at the time of the attacks and his arrest, were also reduced by three years, to an effective seven years’ imprisonment.
All of the changed sentences are in effect from the date of the appellants’ sentencing on 8 December 2015, the court said. The court, in a joint judgement by the three appeal judges, said there was overwhelming evidence that showed a conspiracy had been prepared and implemented to secede the then Caprivi region from Namibia.
On the basis of that conspiracy, the trial judge was correct to convict the accused, whom he found guilty of high treason on charges of murder and attempted murder as well, the court concluded.
The 27 appellants should have known, or in fact knew, that people may be killed or injured while executing their plan to secede the region, or they had knowledge of the attacks staged on 2 August 1999 and failed to alert the authorities, the court noted, before stating: “They would be equally guilty.”
In the judgement which Hoff delivered in September 2015, when he found 30 of the accused before him guilty and acquitted 79 accused, he was even-handed in his assessment of the evidence and rejected some of it, where appropriate, the court observed.
Hoff “was fully entitled to draw the inference of guilt” in respect of the 27 accused who subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court, and the court is satisfied that he was correct in doing so, the judges said. On the sentences imposed by Hoff, the court remarked that the seriousness of the offences committed by the appellants is self-evident.
The crimes were committed nine years into Namibia’s new dawn of freedom and democracy, which the country’s people had fought for, and it is to be expected that some of the people might perhaps have been disgruntled, the court stated.
By the sentences it has decided to impose, the court should play a role to facilitate reconciliation between the country’s people, without ignoring the scorn with which the goal of dismembering Namibia as a country was viewed, the judges said. Arguments on the appeal were heard by the court from 30 August to 30 September this year.
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