BRENDAN BOYLE, Pretoria | Thursday
MIXED reactions have greeted a decision by a Pretoria court to grant bail to the six white police officers alleged to have set dogs on illegal job-seekers.
While demonstrators outside the court shouted “one settler, one bullet” and demanded the six be jailed, the accused’s delighted families said they would celebrate the decision.
“The court could not find that it is in the interest of justice that bail be denied,” magistrate Allan Cowan said, setting bail at R2000.
The men left the court in three armoured trucks and were released from the police stations where they have been held for two weeks since amateur video footage of their alleged assault on three Mozambican aliens was screened by the public broadcaster.
“It’s been a big ordeal, but he’s coming home. We’re going to celebrate, we’re not just going to stay home,” said Liani Guiotto, whose husband Dino is one of the men accused of letting police dogs repeatedly maul the three victims in January, 1998.
Johan Botha, Guiotto’s father-in-law, told reporters the young policeman was “a soft guy, a gentle guy”.
“I feel great…It shows that justice in this country is going well,” he said.
But a black bystander said the decision to release the men until their trial in January would anger the black majority.
“I think this is very, very unfair. They were not supposed to get bail. Apartheid is still ruling in this country,” he said.
Inside the court, a dozen black policemen with automatic rifles stood between the dock and the public gallery, where supporters of the policemen mingled uncomfortably with black spectators.
Lawyers for the six policemen dismissed a state claim that the men would be in danger if they were released pending trial on charges of abduction, extortion and assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm.
The accused, who were all in court, are Jacobus Petrus Smith, 31, Lodewyk Christiaan Koch, 32, Nicolaas Kenneth Loubser, 27, Dino Guiotto, 27, Robert Benjamin Henzen, 32, and Eugene Werner Truter, 28.
Sergeant Smith has said in an affidavit that the dogs were old, and that their teeth were blunt.