Family murderer to appeal against 69-year sentence

A prison inmate serving a 69-year jail term for murdering a family of four people 23 years ago may now appeal to the Supreme Court against his sentences.

Twenty-two years after he was sentenced in the Windhoek High Court, Usiel Gariseb (45) was on Friday given permission to appeal to the Supreme Court against his sentences.

Gariseb applied to be given leave to appeal in the wake of a landmark Supreme Court judgement, delivered in February 2018, in which it was ruled that prison terms which could extend beyond the life expectancy of an offender constitute cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment and are in conflict with the Constitution’s guarantee of respect for human dignity.

In a ruling delivered on Friday last week, judge Christie Liebenberg commented that Gariseb’s belated move to appeal against his sentences was a flagrant breach of the time limits set in the court’s rules for appeals.

However, since there are good prospects that Gariseb’s appeal may succeed, in light of the Supreme Court’s judgement on the constitutionality of extra-long prison terms, he is being granted leave to appeal, Liebenberg added.

Gariseb was sentenced in the Windhoek High Court in November 2001, after he admitted guilt on four counts of murder, a charge of robbery with aggravating circumstances and a count of housebreaking with intent to steal and theft.

Gariseb admitted that he murdered a family of four people at a farm in the Gobabis district on 1 December 2000.

He killed Jan Harm Labuschagne (44), his wife, Ina Labuschagne (39), and the couple’s daughter, Marlene (12), by shooting them with firearms that he had stolen from their house.

The couple’s nine-year-old son, Hendrik (‘Hennie’), tried to run away from the murder scene at a farm gate where Gariseb had waited for the family to arrive in their pickup. Gariseb pursued the boy and, after catching him, clubbed him to death with a piece of wood.

The judge who sentenced Gariseb said he regarded the murder of the boy to have been particularly brutal and disturbing.

Gariseb was merciless when he carried out a horrific and brutal massacre, the judge also commented.

Gariseb, who was an employee of Jan Labuschagne before he committed the murders and other crimes, did not testify during his trial.

In a plea statement given to the court, he claimed he decided to kill Labuschagne because the farmer had defrauded him in a transaction involving diamonds.

He killed the other members of Labuschagne’s family because he did not want to leave alive any witness of his murder of the farmer, Gariseb also stated in his plea explanation.

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