Pretoria | Sunday
PROSECUTORS said Saturday they would not appeal a High Court decision which overturned an order issued to foreign journalists to hand over video material of the killing of druglord Rashaad Staggie.
The National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP), said in a statement they would not further delay the trial of the men accused of killing gangster Rashaad Staggie.
A judge last month ruled that an English court order forcing Reuters and the Associated Press (AP) to hand over video footage of a vigilante lynching was invalid.
Judge Jeanette Traverso said state prosecutors did not follow proper procedure in seeking recourse to the British justice system and therefore the ruling against the two agencies did not apply.
The NDPP said in a statement, released in Pretoria, it would “consider the conduct” of Deputy National Director of Prosecutions Jan d’Oliveira and senior prosecutor Willie Viljoen, which the court deemed unconstitutional.
The prosecutors went to court in England because Reuters and AP had shipped their footage to their London offices to sidestep attempts by the state to seize it.
State prosecutors claim that the video material is critical evidence against five members of the vigilante group People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (PAGAD), who are on trial in Cape Town for killing Staggie.
He was shot and set alight in the Cape Town suburb of Saltriver in August 1996 during a protest march by PAGAD supporters.
The foreign and local media have refused to release videos, notes and photographs taken at the murder scene, arguing that the precedent would put journalists’ lives at risk. – AFP