Doubts shadow child murder confession

RENEWED doubts about a confession that child rape and murder suspect Lesley Kukame made shortly after his arrest more than four years ago have surfaced after his trial resumed in the High Court in Windhoek this week.

Kukame (29) is charged with counts of murder, rape and abduction, alternatively kidnapping, in connection with the disappearance and death of a three-and-a-half-year-old girl, ‘M’, in Katutura between February 7 and 10 2005. He has pleaded not guilty on all the charges.
The child’s body was found in a service room next to the disused Katutura Cinema Hall on Independence Avenue on February 10 2005. She had gone missing from a house near the Cinema Hall three days earlier.
During the period that M was missing, Kukame was posted at the Cinema Hall as a security guard.
At this stage the only evidence before the court that is implicating Kukame in the death and alleged rape of M is a confession that he wrote in his own hand after he was put through a lie detector test and questioned by former Police officer Nelius Becker on February 11 2005, and incriminating answers that he gave when he was questioned by a Police detective, Warrant Officer Geoffrey Scott, after he had written the self-incriminating statement.
A further confession that he gave to another Police officer was ruled inadmissible by Judge Kato van Niekerk in December 2007, before postponements and Kukame’s illness interrupted his trial until this week.
State advocate Dominic Lisulo closed the prosecution’s case against Kukame after presenting the last evidence against him to the court this week.
This was followed by a request from Judge Van Niekerk that Lisulo and defence lawyer Ivo dos Santos should again address her on the admissibility of the statements by Kukame which she had ruled admissible a year and four months ago.
Judge Van Niekerk could reverse that ruling, if in her opinion additional evidence that has been placed before her would be sufficient to change the decision she had initially made on the statements made by Kukame.
After the ruling in which the statements were admitted as evidence in the trial, a full transcript was made of a video recording of Becker’s questioning of Kukame before the confession was written.
The contents of the transcript, showing how Becker questioned Kukame, challenged him when he felt Kukame was lying to him, and repeatedly encouraged him to tell the truth, appears to have raised new doubts about whether Kukame was unduly influenced to give a confession.
While being addressed by Lisulo yesterday, Judge Van Niekerk remarked that she had ‘grave and severe difficulty’ with the way in which Kukame was questioned and encouraged to reveal the truth. She commented that in some instances Becker was misleading Kukame, making incorrect statements to him such as that a court would not find any mitigation in his case if he persisted with his denials.
As for the way Scott had questioned Kukame, she got the impression that as far as he was concerned, as long as Kukame was not tortured or mistreated it did not matter how the Police got him to make a statement, as long as that statement was the truth, she also remarked. In fact, it is very important how Kukame got to the stage where he made a statement, she said.
Lisulo told the Judge that he agreed to a certain extent that Becker had misled Kukame.
Kukame was nevertheless not forced to make a statement, but did so voluntarily, Lisulo said. He argued that it would not render Kukame’s trial unfair or be detrimental to the administration of justice if the court still accepted Kukame’s statement as evidence.
In the statement, which is about one and a quarter pages long, Kukame related that he had intercourse with the girl. He then pushed her underwear into her mouth and ‘pulled’ her jersey around her neck, and left her on the scene without checking whether she was still alive, he wrote. He closed off the statement with a remark that he thought he had to be suffering from some psychological problem which had led him to ‘that abominable deed’.
On a question from Scott, who asked him why he wanted to make a confession, Kukame answered: ‘I know exactly what happened and I feel guilty.’
Dos Santos is set to address the court today.
Kukame has been in custody since his arrest four years and two months ago.
werner@namibian.com.na