NAMIBIAN and Angolan police need to work harder and closer together to arrest fugitive Lazarus Shaduka.
This was a request expressed by Namibian police chief Inspector General Sebastian Ndeitunga when he opened a joint regional technical sub-committee meeting between Namibia and Angola at Oshakati yesterday.
Shaduka is on the run since December 2012 when the Supreme Court overturned his High Court conviction on a charge of culpable homicide to a conviction on a charge of murder.
The Supreme Court also replaced the sentence of one year’s imprisonment, or a fine of N$25 000, which he received at the end of his trial in the High Court in Windhoek on 30 August 2010, with a sentence of a 20-year prison term.
He was convicted of murdering his wife, Selma Shaimemanya (33) in the couple’s home in Klein Windhoek on 13 July 2008. Shaimemanya died from a single gunshot to her upper back.
Shaduka allegedly fled the country via the Oshikango border post in the Ohangwena region into Angola on 13 December 2012, and is still on the run, despite police offering N$100 000 for information leading to his arrest.
At yesterday’s meeting, Ndeitunga said cross-border operations between Namibia and Angola should be intensified, and “police commanders of Namibia and Angola should make sure that the fugitive Shaduka, who has been in hiding for so long now, is arrested after your meeting here at Oshakati”.
“Shaduka has a family in Namibia as well as in Angola. So, work hard and arrest him,” Ndeitunga told the police commanders attending the meeting.
The meeting, under the chairmanship of Ohangwena police commander Tylves Kampolo and his Cunene province counterpart Antonio de Jesus Miranda Guedes, is being attended by provincial police commanders from Cunene, Namibe, Huila and Cuando-Cubango in Angola as well as police commanders from the Zambezi, Kavango East and Kavango West, Oshikoto, Ohangwena, Oshana, Omusati and Kunene regions.
They are discussing cooperation on cross-border crimes such as stock theft, the smuggling of contraband items, theft of motor- vehicles, armed robberies, human trafficking and the unlawful movement of firearms.
