Rape and murder suspects choose silence

THE four men in the dock are accused of crimes that were nasty and brutish: kidnapping, gang rape and, finally, murder.
During the night from May 13 to 14 2005, it is alleged, they pulled Theresia Afrikaner, a 23-year-old mother of two children, from a bar in Windhoek’s Okuryangava area, viciously assaulted her outside, dragged her screaming into the darkness, and finally took turns raping her before murdering her.

Yesterday all four of the charged men – Sam Angolo (25), Jonathan Taapopi Ashipala (23), Stefanus Lazarus (28) and Thomas Phillemon (27) – chose to exercise their right to remain silent in the face of the allegations that they have been facing in the High Court since mid-October last year. The four men in the dockbefore Acting Judge Claus Hinrichsen all decided to close the case in their defence without testifying on their own behalf or presenting any evidence in their defence to the court.They made this decision after State advocate Ed Marondedze had closed the prosecution’s case against them on Monday.The case is now scheduled to return to court on Tuesday next week, when Marondedze and defence lawyers Jan Wessels, Profysen Muluti, Edwin Coetzee and Clive Kavendjii will address the court on the judgement that is to be delivered at the end of the trial.All four of the charged men pleaded not guilty when their trial started on October 14 last year.Some of the last evidence that Marondedze presented to the court before he closed the State’s case this week was a report on a post-mortem examination of Afrikaner’s body.The doctor who carried out the autopsy, the late Dr Elizabeth Shangula, concluded that Afrikaner had most likely been strangled.She found abrasions all over Afrikaner’s body, a cut on her upper lip, noted that her right eye was swollen shut, made a note of distinct bruise marks on both sides of Afrikaner’s throat, and also found bruises on her private parts.The State witnesses who testified during the trial included six eyewitnesses who told the court that they saw Afrikaner being assaulted by two of the charged men during the early morning hours of May 14 2005. Five of these witnesses told the court that they saw Angolo assaulting her by beating, slapping and kicking her. One of these witnesses testified that he saw Angolo kicking Afrikaner in the face. Another witness said he saw Angolo kicking Afrikaner, and also kicking her while she was lying on the ground where she had collapsed under the assault.A relative of Afrikaner was one of the eyewitnesses to the assault. She told the court that she saw Angolo beating and kicking Afrikaner, while Ashipala was holding Afrikaner at one stage of the assault. Lazarus was also at the scene, but he was just looking on, she told the court.She claimed that the last she saw of Afrikaner was when Ashipala took her away into the darkness. The witness claimed that as Afrikaner was being dragged off, she was screaming: ‘Help me, help me, I’m going to be killed.’About three hours after that had happened, Afrikaner’s partly naked body was found lying in a dry riverbed in Okuryangava.Another relative of Afrikaner who also claimed to have seen the assault told the court that she saw Ashipala slapping and punching Afrikaner and finally pulling her with him into the darkness.A statement that Ashipala made to the Police after his arrest is also part of the evidence in the trial. In the statement, he related that he saw Angolo raping Afrikaner after he had seen Angolo, Lazarus and Phillemon drag her off with them towards a riverbed. He further stated that he saw Lazarus and Phillemon throwing stones at her and telling Angolo to finish with her so that they too could have ‘a turn on the female’.Because Ashipala did not repeat the statement in his own testimony during the trial, the contents of the statement can be used as evidence against himself only.All four of the accused men remain in custody.