Mungo Soggot and Andy Duffy
A number of policemen charged with torturing suspects in custody – in some cases with electric shocks – have not been suspended while awaiting trial.
The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) – the police watchdog which has received 63 complaints of police torture over the past year – has confirmed to lawyers representing the alleged victims that the policemen who allegedly assaulted their clients are still on duty.
In one case, policemen from Middelburg are still serving despite the fact that lawyers discovered electric-shock equipment at the police station during a court-ordered search.
The man they allegedly tortured, Isaac Lentsoane, says under oath that they beat him, gave him electric shocks and carried out a mock execution. One man present in the room with the police officers bragged to him that he was a member of the Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging “and had killed 60 kaffirs. He said he would enjoy killing me.”
Lentsoane says in his affidavit he was taken to the police station in October 1996 by employees of the security company which patrolled the mine where he worked. Before the policemen began assaulting him, he was connected to a lie-detector machine and asked whether he had met any of the men who stole the wages at the mine. He was never charged.
Lentsoane says the policemen threatened to hunt him down if he reported them, before releasing him in a forest where they had driven him in the boot of a car.
The ICD wrote to Lentsoane’s lawyers at the University of the Witwatersrand’s law clinic on April 30 to confirm that none of the accused officers – Sergeant TJ Furstenburg, Sergeant WL Otto and Captain A Chadinha – had been suspended pending the outcome of the criminal proceedings against them.
A Wits law clinic attorney who specialises in police torture cases, Peter Jordi, says he is acting for other clients allegedly tortured by policemen who remain on duty pending trial. One client, Makhasonke Ngwenya, was allegedly tortured by police from the Soweto murder and robbery squad during questioning about the attempted murder of a policeman. He claims he was tied up, suffocated with a piece of rubber and shocked with wires attached to his toes.
Ngwenya, who was acquitted of attempted murder, says in court papers one of his alleged torturers, a Captain Kriegler, “told me he would kill me and my girlfriend”. The office of the attorney general has ordered that Kriegler, Detective Sergeant NC Luthuli, a Detective Sergeant Burger and a Constable Segwatle all be prosecuted.
The ICD has confirmed that none of these policemen has been suspended from duty.
Jordi says the fact that the alleged torturers in two cases threatened their victims would ordinarily be sufficient to deny them bail. Instead, they are not only not in prison, but are still serving as policemen.
Jordi says the government’s handling of these cases is little better than that of the previous regime, which helped inculcate a torture culture in the police service.
He says one client who complained he was tortured found that the criminal case against him was being investigated by the same policeman who allegedly tortured him. In June last year the policeman was pulled off the case after a court interdict.
The safety and security secretariat is still drawing up a torture policy. The secretariat’s director of legal services, Amichand Soman, says, under the new policy, torture amounts to misconduct and will therefore lead to suspension.
Soman says two months ago he asked provincial police departments for information about civil actions against alleged torturers, but he has yet to receive replies.
The ICD confirms 63 cases of police torture have been reported over the past year, but is unable to say how many policemen have been suspended, passing the question to the South African Police Service (SAPS). At the time of going to press an officer in the SAPS national disciplinary unit could not say how many policemen have been suspended amid torture claims.
There have been very few successful prosecutions of police torturers since 1994. One of the few reported involved four officers from the Vanderbijlpark murder and robbery unit, who were fined R4 000 or 400 days in jail after being found guilty of administering electric shocks.
The crack police squad set up to combat vigilantes on the Cape Flats is under investigation for allegedly using torture to force a witness to talk.
A 17-year-old youth, whose name has not been disclosed, claims members of the special task unit tried to suffocate him with a plastic bag when he refused to answer their questions. He says unit members bound his hands, pushed him around and threatened put him in jail where they told him he would be raped. The youth finally gave them false information in a bid to escape.
The unit was pursuing a lead in one of a spate of high-profile murders allegedly involving elements of People against Gangsterism and Drugs earlier this year.
The ICD has taken up the youth’s case as a priority investigation. Regional chief Riaz Saloojee says the torture complaint is one of several allegations levelled against the unit in the past five months. The ICD hopes to finalise its recommendations within the next month.
Western Cape police say they are not able to comment on the allegations until the ICD notifies them of the complaints against the unit.
Saloojee says “it’s all to do with a lack of thoroughness and a lack of training”, adding that “if you don’t comply with procedures, you’re going to weaken any case you want to bring to court”.