OWN CORRESPONDENT, Cape Town | Wednesday
JUDGE Nathan Erasmus, who is under constant police guard after receiving death threats when he sentenced two Pagad members to 11 life terms for murder, has collapsed from stress and is receiving medical treatment, the Cape Times reports.
The judge was apparently told that it was not a question of whether he would be murdered, but when and where.
Speaking to a reporter from the newspaper at his heavily guarded Kraaifontein home, Judge Erasmus said the strain under which he was living has had such an effect on him that he was unable to get out of the bath unaided on Tuesday.
He said he had lost all sensation in his right hand and had to be helped into his clothes by his wife, Charlene.
Judge Erasmus has been booked off work until at least the end of next month, said the newspaper. On March 28, his bodyguards were told of a death threat made three days after he had sentenced Pagad member Mansoer Legget to 11 life sentences on 11 counts of murder committed over five months in 1999. Judge Erasmus also sentenced Legget to 10 years for each of the seven attempted murders he committed and three years for the unlawful possession of firearms and ammunition.
Judge Erasmus said he had been protected by bodyguards since last June when he heard the bail appeal of Pagad national co-ordinator Abdoes Salaam Ebrahim.
That security was cancelled without him being consulted or reasons given and was reintroduced after the murder of Wynberg magistrate Piet Theron.
At the beginning of the Legget trial, Judge Erasmus was assigned two bodyguards, but this was later changed to one. The reason given was that there was a staff shortage.
When the threat against his life was made on March 28, a second bodyguard was assigned and again withdrawn without him being consulted. It was only when he insisted that his security be improved, that a second person was re-assigned.
Regarding the row that erupted after Kraaifontein police took an hour to respond to the judge’s reports that he was under threat, Judge Erasmus said he doubted the bona fides of the station commissioner.
A week before the threat, information was received that a judge would be killed that weekend and that it would be him and his bodyguard. He and his family were evacuated by the National Intelligence Agency and lived in hotels and moved around.
The judge said he will refuse to be admitted to hospital or to take medication until such time that the police can assure him that they were serious about the security of his children.
Selby Bokaba, representative for the National Protection Service, said all judges and magistrates dealing with urban terror cases have been given adequate protection.
A new team of bodyguards are to be assigned to the judge next week.
ZA*NOW:
Pagad murder trial witness shot dead April 10, 2001