The Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein on Friday dismissed an appeal by a policeman who set his patrol dog on illegal immigrants in a ”training exercise.”
Appeal judge Robin Marais ruled appropriate a prison sentence of seven years, handed down to Kobus Smith in the Pretoria High Court. The former dog unit sergeant had appealed against this sentence, maintaining that correctional supervision would have been more fitting.
Smith was convicted on three counts of assault with the intent to cause grievous bodily harm. In his appeal hearing, Smith’s lawyer had argued that the repeated showing of a video-recording of the crime might have wrongly aggravated his sentence.
In his judgment on Friday, Marais described the videotape as ”searing scenes which haunt the mind and fill one with revulsion and anger.
”They are an ugly manifestation of what society detests: The brutal abuse of power and authority when dealing with the defenceless and vulnerable.”
Marais said the videotape revealed ”the frightening ferocity of the dogs; the abject terror of the complainants and their howls of anguish as they were mauled by the dogs, and the devastation of their fragile human dignity as aliens in a land not their own.”
However, Marais was satisfied that the high court judge, when considering Smith’s sentence, was not overwhelmed by the ”emotions which well up on viewing the videotape.”
He said the belief that black people were not merely different in appearance, but belonged to a lower order, also took an apparent toll on Smith.
This, including the view that blacks were fit subjects for humiliation, was among the ”worst excesses” of the political culture which permeated Smith’s formative years.
However, these were consequences of the policeman’s occupation and his growing up in a politically and racially abnormal society, Marais said.
It was therefore ”unsafe” to infer that Smith was innately sadistic and given to violence. The judge said it would have required considerable courage and
strength of character from Smith to refuse to cooperate in the ”training exercise.”
At least some of his superiors must have expected of him to participate in the longstanding practice. Nonetheless, he did not find the high court’s sentence
manifestly inappropriate, Marais said.
The cases against two of Smith’s fellow accused, who pleaded not guilty, were postponed pending his appeal.
Like Smith, Nicolaas Kenneth Loubser and Dino Guiotto have been out on bail after being convicted in March. – Sapa