Bail at last for Jamaican hotel guest

A JAMAICAN national who has spent more than a year and eight months detained without trial in Windhoek Central Prison because of an unpaid hotel bill of close to half a million Namibia dollars was granted bail in the Windhoek Regional Court on Friday.

A JAMAICAN national who has spent more than a year and eight months detained without trial in Windhoek Central Prison because of an unpaid hotel bill of close to half a million Namibia dollars was granted bail in the Windhoek Regional Court on Friday.
Norman Lockland Escoffery (68) will have to find N$100 000 to be deposited as bail before he will be released from a stint in custody that has by now lasted almost two years and eleven months.
He was granted bail of N$100 000 by Regional Court Magistrate Dinnah Usiku on Friday, at the end of a bail application that had started the previous day. Magistrate Usiku also ordered that Escoffery should, once he is released on bail, report at the Windhoek Police Station every Monday, Wednesday and Friday morning, that he has to hand all his travel documents to the Police officer handling his case and may not apply to be issued with new travel documents before his case has been finalised, and that he may not leave the district of Windhoek without the written permission of the head of the Police’s Commercial Crime Investigation Unit.
Escoffery was a guest of the Windhoek Country Club Hotel from April 28 2005 until March 1 2006. In that time, the hotel claims, his account ran up to a total of N$472 992,92, which remains unpaid to today.
The hotel finally started taking legal steps to recover the money owed by Escoffery in February 2006, when it got a High Court order to have Escoffery arrested so that the court could establish and confirm its jurisdiction over him as a foreign national.
After his arrest, Escoffery was detained at Windhoek Central Prison without trial until a lawyer from the Legal Assistance Centre filed a case with the High Court in November 2007 to ask the court to order his release from custody.
He was then ostensibly released, only to be rearrested immediately, this time on a criminal charge of fraud. He has remained locked up in prison since then.
Escoffery is set to go on trial in the Windhoek Regional Court on the fraud charge, while also facing an alternative charge of theft by false pretences, on June 18.
During the bail application Escoffery told the Magistrate that he is suffering from a heart condition, with the result that a special diet had been prescribed for him. He has not been receiving this diet in prison, though, and has also not been receiving the medication prescribed for his condition regularly, he complained.
He said he plans to pursue a civil claim against the authorities over his detention. He also denied that he owed the Windhoek Country Club Hotel the amount that the hotel claims his account is amounting to.
If he is released on bail, he can stay with a friend, Antoine Mbok, that he had met a few years ago, Escoffery told the court.
Escoffery was represented by lawyer Johanna Nghishekwa of the law firm Metcalfe Legal Practitioners during the bail hearing. Public Prosecutor Karin Esterhuizen represented the State.