/ 14 May 2010

Hawks in new torture scandals

Hawks In New Torture Scandals

The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) is investigating the widespread use of torture on suspects by members of the elite police unit, the Hawks.

It appears to be prevalent among some members of the former organised crime unit, which now falls under the Hawks, according to the ICD. The Hawks replaced the Scorpions after the latter were disbanded in January last year.

The Mail & Guardian can reveal that:

  • Eleven Hawks, which the ICD claims are former organised crime unit members, in Gauteng are being investigated for assaulting and torturing suspects in a cash-in-transit heist in December 2006.
  • In Klerksdorp, Hawks are being investigated for allegedly torturing the girlfriend of a suspect in a criminal case. She claims she was given electric shocks and had a black bag pulled over her head.
  • Also in Klerksdorp, six Hawks detectives have been arrested for allegedly torturing bank robbery suspects. The Hawks appeared in the Klerksdorp Magistrate’s Court last week and police sources claim senior Hawks officers went to court in a show of support.

    One of the accused, Captain Tsietsi Mano, is the investigating officer in the Eugene Terre’Blanche murder case. All of those arrested are from the former organised crime unit.

    Musa Zondi, the Hawks spokesperson, said none of those arrested had been suspended. “Why should they be suspended?” he asked. “They haven’t been found guilty of anything. Let the courts decide and we’ll take if from there.”

    Other Hawks members in Klerksdorp who came from the organised crime unit are being investigated in 16 other cases, according to Moses Dlamini, the ICD spokesperson.

  • The ICD is investigating a case involving Hawks members accused of using torture in KwaZulu-Natal, but no other information was available.

As previously reported, 14 Hawks in the Western Cape were implicated last year in 18 cases involving murder and torture.

In particular they were accused of involvement in the brutal murder of Sidwell Mkwambi, a 24-year-old New Crossroads resident.

No action
Although the ICD recommended the suspension of the officers, Western Cape police commissioner Mzwandile Petros has not acted on the matter.

Although the ICD investigation of the cases was finalised by September last year, the Directorate of Public
Prosecutions (DPP) has not yet decided whether to prosecute them. Those implicated were all organised crime unit members.

“The DPP came back to us with queries in January [this year] and we responded by March,” said Dlamini.
“We’re still awaiting its decision.”

Methods of torture investigated by the ICD in the Western Cape include handcuffing suspects’ hands behind their backs before pulling plastic bags over their heads, threatening them with suffocation, pulling inner tubes over their faces and hitting, kicking and slapping them.

Damages
Meanwhile, lawyers for Chumane Maxwele, the Cape Town jogger who was arrested by President Jacob Zuma’s VIP protection unit after allegedly showing his middle finger to the president’s motorcade, has claimed damages from Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa.

Neil O’Brien, Maxwele’s lawyer, would not detail the amount of damages being sought, but the M&G understands it is less than R2-million. A letter of demand also points out that the police have not apologised.

The 25-year-old claims he was the victim of an unlawful arrest and detention and defamation. According to Maxwele, three men leapt out of a black BMW X5 with AK-47s and arrested him while he was jogging along De Waal Drive in February this year.

In an interview shortly after his arrest, Maxwele said he had been shoved into the vehicle and his hands tied with a cable behind his back.

“Then they got a big black bag and they pulled it over my face so I couldn’t see anything,” he said. “It was horrifying and I was paralysed. I felt unable to breathe.”