Detective’s arson trial postponed to January

THE trial in which one of the Namibian Police’s top detectives, Inspector Michael Booysen, is facing arson and other charges over a domestic disturbance at his girlfriend’s flat in Windhoek in August 2004 was again postponed in the Windhoek Regional Court on Monday.

Booysen (50), who has been on suspension from his post in the Police for more than three years already, is now set to return to court on January 15 for what should be the continuation of his trial. The trial was postponed on September 25, after Magistrate Christie Mostert at the close of the prosecution’s case discharged Booysen on three of the seven charges to which he had pleaded not guilty two weeks earlier.By Monday, though, the record of the trial proceedings so far, which Booysen and his lawyer, Sisa Namandje, want to provide to a forensics expert for a second opinion on the cause of the fire that Booysen is accused of starting at his girlfriend’s flat, was not yet available, prompting a further postponement of the case.After being discharged on counts of assault by threat, pointing of a firearm and housebreaking, which the prosecution conceded it had not managed to prove, Booysen is still facing charges of arson, alternatively malicious damage to property, discharging a firearm in a public place, malicious damage to property and assault by threat over the incident that left his girlfriend’s flat at the Windhoek Central Hospital Nurses’ Home gutted by fire on August 9 2004.The State is alleging that Booysen started the fire in the flat.Booysen is denying that.Namandje has put it to State witnesses who have claimed that they heard Booysen saying that he had put only his own clothes or belongings in the flat on fire, that Booysen actually stated that he had only fired shots at his own belongings in the flat.Namandje has also put it to witnesses that in a scuffle with his girlfriend, Booysen lost his balance and fell against a stove, which is claimed to have been switched on and to have fallen over in the process.The last prosecution witness whose evidence Public Prosecutor Brownwell Uirab has presented to the court before closing the State’s case was National Forensic Science Institute of Namibia Director Paul Ludik.He told the court that a team of three forensic analysts who investigated the cause of the fire inferred that the fire started in at least two different locations in the flat – near a bed that was standing near an exit to a balcony, and in the vicinity of a fridge that was standing on the opposite side of the room, also near the exit to the balcony.No signs of any electrical malfunction that could have caused the fire were found, Ludik and his two colleagues, forensic analysts William Onesmus Nambahu and Jaco Robberts, concluded in their report that was submitted to the Magistrate as evidence in the trial.”The fire was highly probably caused by deliberate human intervention,” they reported.Booysen remains free on bail of N$2 000.The trial was postponed on September 25, after Magistrate Christie Mostert at the close of the prosecution’s case discharged Booysen on three of the seven charges to which he had pleaded not guilty two weeks earlier.By Monday, though, the record of the trial proceedings so far, which Booysen and his lawyer, Sisa Namandje, want to provide to a forensics expert for a second opinion on the cause of the fire that Booysen is accused of starting at his girlfriend’s flat, was not yet available, prompting a further postponement of the case.After being discharged on counts of assault by threat, pointing of a firearm and housebreaking, which the prosecution conceded it had not managed to prove, Booysen is still facing charges of arson, alternatively malicious damage to property, discharging a firearm in a public place, malicious damage to property and assault by threat over the incident that left his girlfriend’s flat at the Windhoek Central Hospital Nurses’ Home gutted by fire on August 9 2004.The State is alleging that Booysen started the fire in the flat.Booysen is denying that.Namandje has put it to State witnesses who have claimed that they heard Booysen saying that he had put only his own clothes or belongings in the flat on fire, that Booysen actually stated that he had only fired shots at his own belongings in the flat.Namandje has also put it to witnesses that in a scuffle with his girlfriend, Booysen lost his balance and fell against a stove, which is claimed to have been switched on and to have fallen over in the process.The last prosecution witness whose evidence Public Prosecutor Brownwell Uirab has presented to the court before closing the State’s case was National Forensic Science Institute of Namibia Director Paul Ludik.He told the court that a team of three forensic analysts who investigated the cause of the fire inferred that the fire started in at least two different locations in the flat – near a bed that was standing near an exit to a balcony, and in the vicinity of a fridge that was standing on the opposite side of the room, also near the exit to the balcony.No signs of any electrical malfunction that could have caused the fire were found, Ludik and his two colleagues, forensic analysts William Onesmus Nambahu and Jaco Robberts, concluded in their report that was submitted to the Magistrate as evidence in the trial.”The fire was highly probably caused by deliberate human intervention,” they reported.Booysen remains free on bail of N$2 000.