Guilty: 30. Not guilty: 79. That is the final tally of convictions and acquittals in the main Caprivi high treason trial, after Judge Elton Hoff reached the end of the delivery of his verdict in the matter in the Windhoek High Court yesterday afternoon.
With 44 of the 121 men who went on trial before Judge Hoff near the end of October 2003 having been discharged after the prosecution closed its case in the trial, another 35 were yesterday pronounced not guilty on the main charge of high treason and related counts.
Three of those acquitted of high treason were found guilty of charges in terms of Namibia’s immigration laws, though, for having crossed Namibia’s borders without going through designated entry and exit points.
Out of the 65 men who remained in the dock after Judge Hoff’s discharge ruling at the end of the prosecution’s case, 30 have been found guilty of high treason, nine charges of murder, and 90 counts of attempted murder.
The conclusion of Judge Hoff’s verdict, which took six days to read, is the latest landmark in a trial without parallel in Namibian legal history – involving an unprecedented large number of accused persons who stood trial on a total of 278 charges over a period of close to 12 years.
The length of time that the accused spent in custody while on trial has also been without equal in Namibian history, with most of them having been behind bars for the past 16 years before hearing whether they have been proven guilty or not guilty of involvement in a conspiracy to secede the former Caprivi region from Namibia through the use of violence.
During the course of Judge Hoff’s reading of his judgement, he repeatedly commented on testimony that was given by prosecution witnesses who told the court that they had been severely assaulted or tortured by police officers before they agreed to provide witness statements to the police.
In the end, the testimony of those witnesses proved useless for the prosecution, with Judge Hoff ruling the evidence given by the witnesses as inadmissible and repeatedly pointing out in his judgement that he would not consider testimony obtained through assaults or torture when weighing up the evidence against each individual accused.
The prosecution’s case was also weakened when witnesses who testified in court and implicated some of the accused by mentioning their names did not identify the mentioned persons where they sat in the dock, with the result that the names mentioned were not linked to the accused before court.
One of the key findings that Judge Hoff made yesterday was that it had been proven that the entire Zambezi region – formerly Caprivi – is part of the territory of Namibia, even if parts of the region had been administered separately from the rest of the country on occasions before Namibia’s independence in 1990.
The significance of that finding is that it led to a further finding that people in the region owed allegiance to the Namibian state – which is one of the key pillars on which a charge of high treason is based.
Towards the end of his verdict, when considering whether the accused whose guilt had been proven on the charge of high treason should also be found guilty of murder and attempted murder, Judge Hoff noted that throughout the trial the court heard evidence indicating that an intention to use weapons and violence went hand in hand with the separatist Caprivi Liberation Army’s plans to secede Caprivi from Namibia.
The use of such violent methods, in which the taking of human lives was envisaged, was the antithesis of negotiations and peaceful and democratic means, he said.
Having found that the secessionist movement in the region was intertwined with the use of violence, Judge Hoff found the 30 accused against whom the charge of high treason had been proven guilty of the nine murder charges that they faced and 90 of the attempted murder charges against them as well.
Among the accused whose guilt was confirmed yesterday are Caprivi Liberation Army commander John Samboma, former teacher Aggrey Makendano, who acted as a spokesperson for a group of the accused who boycotted part of the trial while arguing that the court did not have jurisdiction over the former Caprivi, Thaddeus Ndala, and a former policeman, Postrick Mwinga.
Twelve of the accused who went on trial in the High Court at Grootfontein near the end of October 2003 have died in custody.
The 30 convicted men are due to return to court today to hear when further testimony and arguments before their sentencing will be heard.
