Evidence that businessman Cheng Yuan ('Leonard') Lee was kidnapped on the evening of July 7 2003 and was held captive while a ransom payment of US$500 000 was demanded from him, was accepted by the court, Magistrate Sarel Jacobs remarked when he gave his verdict.

However, whether it was proven that the two men before court - Xie Cheng Ming (38) and Wang Lin (35) - were the people who kidnapped Lee, was something quite different.

Magistrate Jacobs ruled that it had not been proven beyond reasonable doubt that they had been correctly identified as the kidnappers by Lee or his wife, Cheng Mai Cheng Lee.

Xie and Wang were arrested the day after Lee was kidnapped.

A few hours into the kidnapping, Lee, who owns the Yang Tze Village building in Klein Windhoek as well as the China Town business complex in the city's Northern Industrial Area, managed to loosen the adhesive tape with which he had been tied up in the bathroom of a house in Pasteur Street in Windhoek West.

He succeeded in escaping over a razor-wire-topped boundary wall, and managed to get help from a passing security company vehicle, he told the Magistrate during the trial.

Lee testified that he and his wife were driving home on the evening of July 7 2003 when a Honda Ballade vehicle forced their car off the road.

After he brought his vehicle to a standstill, he first spoke to the driver of the car that had forced him off the road, and then, when two of the passengers of the Honda got out, found himself being held at gunpoint, he told the court.

He told the Magistrate that he could recognise both Xie and Wang as the two passengers who got out of the Honda.

Wang held him at gunpoint, he said.

He described what he said was Wang's demeanour as the kidnapping started: "This man he walk towards me without any feeling.

(.

.

.) This face has no feeling, no feeling."

He added that he also saw Xie try to pull Mrs Lee towards the Honda.

Mrs Lee, too, told the court that Xie was the person who tried to pull her towards the kidnappers' vehicle.

She said he had a firearm in his hand, but when she tried to take the gun from him, she discovered that it was a plastic toy gun that promptly broke when she got hold of it.

Lee reacted angrily when the two suspects' defence lawyer, Jan Wessels, questioned him over his identification of Xie and Wang as two of the four kidnappers that Lee said drove off with him, blindfolded.

"You can only remember the law," he told Wessels at one stage of his testimony.

"I only remember the face.

Me, I'm very, very special."

Magistrate Jacobs went through the evidence with a fine tooth comb, and concluded that he was not convinced that Xie and Wang had been correctly identified.

Lee told the court under cross-examination that he saw the person that he said was Xie for only about four seconds, when that person got out of the vehicle to approach him, the Magistrate noted.

Lee also told the court that when he first saw a photo of the two suspects in a newspaper after their arrest, he identified Wang as the driver of the kidnappers' car.

But in court during the trial, he said Wang was the person who held him at gunpoint.

This discrepancy, the Magistrate said, was an indication that Lee did not have sufficient opportunity to identify the kidnappers, considering the poor visibility at that time of the evening, the distance that he was from the two men who directly dealt with him and his wife, and the few seconds that he said he had a chance to look at them.

While Wessels questioned him, Lee also told the court that he identified Xie and Wang because they were arrested at the house where he was held captive and their fingerprints were also found there, the Magistrate added.

The suspects had an explanation, however.

They told the court they had stayed at the house, and used the vehicle, around the time of the kidnapping.

They were not at the house on the evening in question, though, and were arrested the next day when they were sent to the house, ostensibly to fetch the vehicle on someone's instructions, the court was told.

The claim from Xie and Wang that they did not kidnap Lee, was a reasonable possibility which might be substantially true, with the result that they had to be acquitted, the Magistrate ruled.

Xie and Wang spent almost a year and a half in Police custody before they were granted bail of N$75 000 each exactly a year ago today.

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