OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday
THE Department of Correctional Services may release jailed cleric Allan Boesak on parole in two weeks, three months earlier than they initially indicated, the Cape Argus reports.
If this happens, the former apartheid activist would have spent eight months of his 36-month sentence in prison, the newspaper said.
This would be the second time the department has mooted an early release for Boesak, whose convictions on two charges of fraud and one of theft totalling almost R500_000 and subsequent jail sentence were confirmed by both the Supreme Court of Appeal and the Constitutional Court.
In September, the department filed an application to have him freed under correctional supervision. In those papers it was said that the former church minister would qualify for parole in June this year. Two months later a cellphone was found in Boesak’s cell and his participation in prison activities were suspended as punishment.
On Tuesday, Boesak was apparently prohibited from leading the Malmesbury prison choir in Worcester in terms of this punishment. He was instead escorted from the premises.
Correctional Services’s application to have Boesak released under correctional supervision went to court on the last day of the previous court term.
Judge Foxcroft, however, reserved judgment, saying that he needed a record of all the calls that had been made from the cellphone as soon as possible. Boesak told prison officials that he had made no calls on the phone.
The parties then appeared to have some difficulty in obtaining the phone records, which led to a subpoena being issued against cellphone operator MTN early in January.
On Tuesday, the Correctional Services department filed papers in court containing information received from MTN that the SIM-card of the phone found in Boesak’s cell had not been activated.