Pretoria | Friday
A HIGH Court judge in South Africa on Thursday sentenced four white policemen to between four and five years in jail for urging their dogs to maul Mozambican immigrants, and called the 1998 attack “cruel and brutal.”
“The assault was brutal. It was cruel and it was carried out on victims who pleaded for their lives. These actions by the accused caused serious damage to the image of the SA (South African) police service. It damaged the victims’ dignity,” Judge Willie van der Merwe said.
Jacobus Smith (30) was given seven years in prison with a two-year suspended sentence, and his three colleagues, Lodewyk Koch (32) Benjamin Henzen (32) and Eugene Truter (28) were each given six years in jail with a two-year suspended sentence.
The four members of the North East Rand dog unit pleaded guilty last week to assault for the attack, in which they encouraged their animals to savagely attack three Mozambican immigrants.
The victims, Gabriel Timane (23) his brother Alexandre Timane (24) and Sebastiao Cossa (25) remain in a police witness protection programme.
The attack, which was filmed on a 40-minute amateur video by one of the police officers and broadcast on television worldwide, shocked the nation with its brutality as policemen set the dogs on their screaming victims.
The police officers were charged with aggravated assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm and seeking to pervert the course of justice. Henzen and Truter confessed to making false entries in their dog-handling unit’s registry.
When the verdicts were handed down, Truter broke down in tears after trembling throughout the hearing.
From the public gallery, Smith’s mother Rina shouted: “No! He’s mad,” in the direction of the judge.
Koch, Henzen and Truter were led off into custody after the hearing. Smith, the only one of the four to have appealed, was freed on bail pending the appeal hearing next Wednesday.
Two other accused, Nicolaas Loubser and Dino Guitto, have pleaded not guilty to all charges and will be tried separately in June next year.
During the trial, one of the defendants and a former senior dog handler said that training dogs on “living targets” was common practice in South Africa and had been so for years.
In the apartheid years, dogs were set on black people in breach of infamous pass laws regarding restrictions on movement.
The victims today are illegal immigrants unlikely to pursue legal proceedings, the court heard.
Last week, the public gallery in the court gasped in horror at the video as the policemen encouraged the dogs to maul the men, who screamed for help in their native Shangaan, a language widely spoken in Mozambique.
The video was shown after it was apparently sold to public SABC television before it was first shown in November last year.
Police management, political parties and NGOs welcomed the sentences.
“Justice has been served and has been seen to be served,” national police commissioner Jackie Selebi said in a statement in Pretoria.
The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) said the sentences should send a clear message to South Africans about what was right and wrong.
“Police brutality, in whatever form, will not be tolerated,” DA spokesman Paul Swart said.
The Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, a non-governmental organisation, welcomed the sentences but called for further measures.
While “the four policemen have been sentenced to imprisonment, what is very clear is that not all of those who were complicit in this act of savagery have yet been held accountable,” the centre said.
“This incident is a very clear case where the principle of accountability of police commanders for the actions of their subordinates to be established.”