Date set for body parts trial

THE Kenyan nurse accused of murdering his wife and the grisly aftermath of that alleged crime at Grootfontein two years ago is destined to wait for more than another year before his trial will be starting in the High Court.

Murder suspect Kenneth Orina made a sixth pre-trial appearance in the High Court in Windhoek yesterday. With this appearance, all the issues that have been holding up the fixing of a trial date for Orina have finally been ironed out, and his case was postponed to a date when his trial should start.That, however, is only on October 6 2010. The trial is scheduled to run from that date until October 29 2010, Acting Judge Raymond Heathcote was informed.Orina remains in custody in the meantime. He has been kept in custody since his arrest on October 30 2007.Orina (36) is charged with counts of murder and defeating or obstructing the course of justice or attempting to do so. He is also facing an alternative charge of violating a dead human body.He is accused of killing his wife, fellow Kenyan national Rose Chepkemoi Kiplangat (33), in their flat at the Nurses’ Home of the Grootfontein State Hospital in the period of September 14 to 17 2007.After Kiplangat had been killed, her body was dismembered and the body parts discarded at various spots around Grootfontein. Her head and forearms were found next to a street running past the Grootfontein State Hospital on September 17 2007.Five days later, her lower legs and upper arms were found on the southwestern outskirts of Grootfontein. Three days after that, her torso and thighs were discovered about 300 metres from the spot where the lower legs and upper arms had been dumped.Orina, who was working at the Grootfontein State Hospital as a nurse, pleaded guilty to charges of murder, defeating the course of justice and violating a dead body when he made his second appearance in the Grootfontein Magistrate’s Court on November 20 2007.He told the court that he and his wife were involved in a fight in their flat and that she threatened him with a knife during this quarrel. When he tried to wrestle the knife away from her she was accidentally cut on her neck, he claimed. Although he tried to help her by stopping her bleeding, the wound to her neck caused her death, Orina told the Magistrate who took his plea.When he realised that she had died he became ‘confused’, Orina said. He claimed he at first wanted to move her body to the mortuary at the hospital, but when he could not succeed in doing that he used a knife to cut her body into different parts.When the Magistrate asked him why he dismembered his wife’s body and disposed of the body parts, Orina answered: ‘Because I loved her and I did not want her body to rot I wanted to take her to the mortuary but the process did not materialise.’He said he dismembered the body on September 15 2007 and during the morning of the following day.The law firm Metcalfe Legal Practitioners, which had been representing Orina, withdrew as his legal representatives in January because Orina could not arrange for money to be sent by his family in Kenya to pay the firm for its services.The Legal Aid Directorate thereafter instructed Oshakati lawyer Jan Greyling to represent him. Acting Judge Heathcote was informed yesterday that Greyling’s instructions had been withdrawn in the meantime and that Legal Aid Directorate lawyer Brownwell Uirab would now be representing Orina.