Trial on cocaine death to continue April 2010

THE trial of alleged drug smuggler Bruno Da Silva Paiva, who is facing charges of murder and dealing in cocaine after an ill-fated trip to Brazil in April 2006, is set to continue only in April next year in the Windhoek Regional Court.

Paiva (32) pleaded not guilty to counts of murder and dealing in, alternatively possession of, a dangerous dependence-producing drug when his trial started before Magistrate Sarel Jacobs in early April this year. After two days of proceedings in the trial, it was postponed to this month.On Monday this week, Paiva was back in the dock before Magistrate Jacobs. With neither Paiva’s lawyer, Sisa Namandje, nor Public Prosecutor Simba Nduna, who represented the State at the start of the trial, available on Monday, and the record of the trial so far also not yet transcribed, the case was postponed to April 12 to 16 next year.While Paiva has been released on bail of N$10 000 on these charges, he is in the meantime serving an 18-month prison term that he received in the Swakopmund Magistrate’s Court early this year after he assaulted his wife by slapping and punching her only some two months after they got married.In the trial in the Windhoek Regional Court Paiva is charged with smuggling 436,431 grams of cocaine, valued at about N$218 215, into Namibia on April 25 2006. The drugs were allegedly brought into the country inside his digestive system and that of his late wife, Darlin Taylor-Da Silva Paiva (26).She died in the couple’s flat in Windhoek on the same day that she and Paiva had returned to Namibia after a trip to Brazil. It is alleged that she was killed by a cocaine overdose after one or more of some 31 plastic parcels of the drug that were later removed from her body had burst open inside her stomach, releasing a lethal dose of cocaine into her system. Paiva is charged with murder in connection with her death.The alleged cocaine that was found in her body is also part of the more than 436 grams of the drug that Paiva is charged with smuggling into Namibia.Paiva is not admitting that the 13 ‘tubes’ that the Police claim to have retrieved from his digestive system after his wife’s death contained cocaine, his lawyer told Magistrate Jacobs after Paiva had pleaded not guilty to all charges at the start of the trial.