Co-detainee says murder accused admitted guilt

ONE of the three men being prosecuted over the killing of an Outjo man during an alleged house robbery in October 2014 admitted to a fellow detainee in police custody that he had been involved in the robbery, a witness testified in the Windhoek High Court yesterday.

Hendrik Nowoseb, who is one of the three men charged over the killing of Outjo resident Gert Koekemoer (71), was in custody at the Outjo Police Station in December 2014 when he told a fellow detainee that he was scared about a case in which he had killed a white man, according to testimony heard by judge Nate Ndauendapo.

The testimony was given by Erwin Khumub, a state witness who told the court he was in police custody with Nowoseb when Nowoseb told him about his involvement in the killing of a white man during a robbery.

Nowoseb (27) and two co-accused, Ferdinand Hangula (41) and Lourens Aib (26), denied guilt on all of the charges they are facing, including counts of murder, attempted murder and robbery with aggravating circumstances, at the start of their trial about two weeks ago.

The state is alleging that they murdered Koekemoer by stabbing him with a knife, and tried to murder a former fiancée of Koekemoer, Zenobia Bezuidenhout, on the evening of 25 October 2014 during a robbery at a small shop that Bezuidenhout was running from Koekemoer’s house.

Bezuidenhout, who was the state’s first witness to testify in the trial, has told the court she was attacked by three masked men when she was closing up the shop at the house she and Koekemoer still shared after their engagement had come to an end. She said she lost consciousness when two of the attackers strangled her while the third assailant had gone into the house with Koekemoer.

Khumub said he met Nowoseb in custody at the Outjo police station in December 2014. He said Nowoseb told him he had a case in which he had stabbed a woman in a hospital – a murder over which he was sentenced to an effective prison term of 44 years in August 2017 – but that he considered that matter not to be as serious as another case that he was scared about, Khumub testified.

He said Nowoseb also told him the other case he was scared about involved the killing of a white man.

According to Khumub, Nowoseb recounted to him that he and two other people had jumped over a fence into a yard where they waited for a while, and when a woman there switched off a light and was closing a shop, they launched an attack.

Khumub also told the court that he wrote a note in which he alerted a police officer about what he had been told by Nowoseb. After he had been interviewed by a police officer who was investigating the killing of Koekemoer, he returned to the cell he was sharing with Nowoseb, and got more information from him about the people who had been with him when the robbery he had been talking about was carried out.

Khumub said the people with him were ‘Oom Tight’ and ‘≠Nu/oâb’ (‘Black Boy’), and that Nowoseb also told him those were the nicknames of Ferdinand Hangula and Lourens Aib.

Cross-examining Khumub, Nowoseb’s defence lawyer, Natji Tjirera, charged that Khumub’s testimony was not believable, and that in fact Nowoseb had not told him anything about the crime he is charged with. Khumub responded: “I am not a madman. I was told this by Hendrik Nowoseb. That is why I am telling this to you.”

The trial is continuing.

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