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Monday, February 26, 2001 - Web posted at 6:17:22 AM GMT Evidence in fridge murder case 'flimsy', says defence NO evidence in the trial of Muller van As and Paul Adonis supports prosecution claims that they murdered a fisherman in 1991, storing his body in a hotel fridge and then dumping it at sea, defence lawyers argued in the High Court in Windhoek last week. Zagrys Grobler, the lawyer representing Hendrik Muller van As, the 53-year-old former owner of Walvis Bay's Mermaid Hotel, on Friday concluded his arguments in support of his client being acquitted and discharged. He argued that alleged irregularities in the Police investigation had to result in all the evidence gathered in such "illegal and unlawful" ways being disregarded. Grobler's colleague on the defence side in the protracted trial which started in June 1997, Adonis's counsel Percy McNally, on Thursday also asked Judge Simpson Mtambanengwe to acquit his client. All that the prosecution had been able to prove was the identity of the alleged murder victim, 40-year-old fisherman John Thomas Muller, McNally submitted. Muller's corpse was found floating in the Walvis Bay harbour on September 18, 12 days after he was last seen alive in the public bar in Van As's hotel where he was allegedly involved in a brawl on September 6 1991. McNally argued that the State had not proved the date of Muller's death, nor that fisherman Adonis (54) had anything to do with his death, nor that Adonis had the intent to kill Muller and had acted in common purpose with someone responsible for his death. Both McNally and Grobler further argued that there was no evidence that the two men had played any part in the claimed dumping of the body into the ocean. What was on record, McNally said, was that both medical doctors who examined Muller's remains - in September 1991 and in February 1996, after he had been exhumed - had concluded that drowning had been the probable cause of death. There was no way in which "a consensual" bar fight Adonis and Muller had been involved in that evening - with scuffles said by witnesses in the trial to have been a common occurrence in the Mermaid Hotel bar - could be related to Muller's eventual death by drowning, McNally submitted. Grobler focused on alleged irregularities in the Police investigation in early 1996. He charged that the investigating officer, Chief Inspector Walter Kurz, had intimidated potential witnesses to make them implicate Van As, played off witnesses against each other and had extracted the type of evidence he was looking for through lengthy, persistent interrogation, and by isolating Van As through designating all potential defence witnesses as State witnesses so that the hotel owner could not properly prepare for his trial. The evidence before the court was so weak that no court could convict the accused on such a basis, Grobler said. He added that the evidence also had to be thrown out because of the "illegal and unlawful" ways it had been gathered in the first place." "Crime is contagious," he quoted from a reported judgement as authority for his argument. "If a government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for law; it invites every man to become a law unto himself, it invites anarchy." "Said Grobler: "A prosecutor must come to court with clean hands." "Because of the claimed irregularities in the investigation, Grobler remarked, this was a case which would tarnish the integrity of the court if the accused were not discharged and were still required to present their defence cases to the court. Deputy Prosecutor General Danie Small is set to reply to the defence lawyers' arguments tomorrow. |
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