Ex-detective evades jail with arson sentencing

THE arson case that sent the Police career of former Detective Inspector Michael Booysen up in smoke came to its end in the Windhoek Regional Court on Thursday, when Booysen was sentenced to a suspended jail term and a fine on two charges.

Booysen (52) was sentenced by acting Magistrate Christie Mostert a day after he had been found guilty on charges of arson and discharging a firearm in a public place.Booysen pleaded not guilty to seven charges when his trial started in the Windhoek Regional Court in September 2007. By the time that the trial reached its final stage about two weeks ago, though, defence lawyer Sisa Namandje, who was representing Booysen, conceded that Booysen could be found guilty on a count of discharging a firearm in a public place.That concession was made after Booysen admitted during the trial that he had fired some shots in the seventh-floor flat of his girlfriend, Agnes Kooper, at the Nurses’ Home at Windhoek Central Hospital on August 9 2004. Booysen told the court that he shot at items in the flat, such as a stove and a television, which he had helped buy, because he was angry and jealous after Kooper had told him that she was involved in a relationship with another man.According to Kooper, that claim that she made to Booysen was false, and was one of various techniques that she used to make Booysen jealous and to get him – at that stage still a married man – to leave his wife for her.Booysen denied that he had set fire to Kooper’s flat, which was destroyed in a blaze shortly after he had left it following the shooting.In the judgement in which he found Booysen guilty on the two charges on Wednesday, Magistrate Mostert recounted that it was concluded in a report compiled by three forensic scientists of the National Forensic Science Institute of Namibia that the fire in the flat had started in two places, and that it was started through ‘deliberate human intervention’. No signs were also found that the fire could have been caused by an electrical malfunction.In his judgement, the Magistrate criticised the Police for negligence because the scene of the fire was not properly guarded after the incident to rule out any interference with the scene before a forensic examination could be done.He also noted that Booysen had, according to another senior Police officer who was outside the flat, told that officer that he had set his clothes in the flat on fire. Magistrate Mostert commented that he was reminded of a remark that had been made by an American lawyer who quipped that a defence lawyer’s first attack is on the facts of a case, with a second line of attack being on the law, and if neither of these work out, smoke should be created the confuse the issues. In Booysen’s case, the only smoke that Booysen managed to create was the smoke that came from the flat on the seventh floor of the Windhoek Central Hospital Nurses’ Home that day, the Magistrate said.Testifying in mitigation of sentence after the verdict had been delivered, Booysen said he wanted to apologise to his former colleagues in the Police and to the Ministry of Health.He maintained that he did not start the fire, still suggesting that the fire could have started because of the stove that he claimed fell over in the flat, but also added that he was not himself on the day of the incident. ‘I was angry, I was jealous,’ he said.During the sentencing the Magistrate told Booysen that he was giving him a second chance in life. He was hoping that his trust in Booysen would not be betrayed, the Magistrate said.He sentenced Booysen to a three-year prison term on the arson charge, with the sentence suspended in whole for a period of five years on condition that Booysen is not convicted of arson committed during the period of suspension. On the count of discharging a firearm in a public place Booysen was sentenced to pay a fine of N$4 000 or serve a three-month jail term, as well as a six-month prison term that was conditionally suspended for a period of five years.The former Detective Inspector Booysen was the second most senior officer in the Namibian Police’s Serious Crime Unit at the time of the incident, which prompted his suspension from his post in the Police on August 12 2004. He remained on suspension until he resigned from the Police in August last year. Booysen told the court last week that he had been a Police officer since 1977.Public Prosecutor Simba Nduna represented the State during the last part of the trial.werner@namibian.com.na