Caprivi treason trial

The Caprivi treason trial is a trial in which the Government of Namibia indicted 132 people for allegedly participating in the Caprivi conflict on the side of the Caprivi Liberation Army in a period between 1992 and 2002. They have been charged with high treason, murder, sedition, and many other offences, altogether 275 counts of criminal conduct.

This trial was the longest and largest trial in the history of Namibia. While it started in 2003, verdict and prosecution is still outstanding for most of the accused. Ten separatists were convicted and sentenced to a combined 314-year jail term, two were acquitted. The other accused are still in jail, or have died in custody. Some of the alleged leaders of the sedition attempt were in exile at the time the Caprivi conflict peaked and have not been brought to court at all.

Background

Caprivi Strip in north-eastern Namibia
Location of the Zambezi Region on the Namibia map
Main article: Caprivi conflict

The Caprivi Strip is a remnant of the Berlin Conference of 1884, at which the European powers divided sub-Saharan Africa amongst themselves, indifferent to its ethnology and often with inadequate knowledge of its geography. After the conference, European governments learned more about the geography of the interior and negotiated changes to boundaries agreed upon in Berlin. In 1890, German diplomat Leo von Caprivi sought to gain access to the Zambezi River for the German colony of South-West Africa, to give Germany an interior route to Africa's East Coast, where the German colony Tanganyika was located. In the Heligoland-Zanzibar Treaty, Germany gave up its interest in Zanzibar in return for the island of Heligoland in the North Sea and the Caprivi Strip. The Zambezi proved to be unnavigable, but the Strip remained, even as South-West Africa became Namibia.

On 2 August 1999, members of the Caprivi Liberation Army (CLA) launched an armed attack on government forces and buildings in the regional capital of Katima Mulilo in the Zambezi Region of north eastern Namibia. The same evening, president Sam Nujoma declared a state of emergency in the Caprivi province. Members of the Namibia Defence Force (NDF, Namibia's national army) and the Special Field Force (SFF, the paramilitary police unit) were deployed and repelled the attack.[1]

11 people were killed during the attacks, among them 6 members of the security forces. 300 suspected rebel fighters and civilian sympathisers were detained, 132 of which were later charged.[2]

Charges and indicted people

Many of the arrested people are from the Mafwe tribe, including the majority of its traditional leadership. The Namibian government has in the mean time recognised other traditional leaders who are perceived to be mere puppets of the ruling SWAPO party.[3]

Among the suspected leading figures detained and charged are:[4][5]

A number of Caprivi traditional leaders and politicians have been implicated but were in exile at the time of the attacks:

Botswana, Denmark and Canada have been granting asylum to people fleeing Namibia in the aftermath of the attack on Katima Mulilo.[6] Only in 2010 Canada has changed its standpoint and is now considering the CLA to be a terrorist organisation that has "attempted to usurp an elected government".[8]

Judges of the trial

Structure of the trial

The Caprivi treason trial consists of 275 charges of murder, sedition, and treason, applied to 132 people. After preliminary hearings, bail applications, legal representation applications and other technical wrestles, the first stage of the trial started on 27 October 2003 in the High Court at Grootfontein.[11]

Trial against the primary accused

Thirteen of the alleged separatists were regarded as the main accused and charged with high treason. They were tried in a separate leg of the proceedings sometimes called the Second Caprivi treason trial. Sentencing and much of the court hearings took place in their absence because throughout the trial they had shouted political slogans and sung Caprivi liberation songs, leading repeatedly to their removal from the court room. In 2007 this second trial ended with ten of the accused convicted and sentenced to 30 or 32 years of jail each, depending on the length of their stay in custody,[12] and the remaining two acquitted and set free on a technicality.[13] The thirteenth accused had died in custody before the sentencing began.

A number of secondary and tertiary trials have been split from the main proceedings, among them a number of counterclaims by the alleged secessionists of unlawful arrest, torture and manhandling, but also the claim that Namibian courts do not have jurisdiction over the Caprivi because the Caprivi Strip is not part of the Republic of Namibia.[14] This claim was taken to the Supreme Court and dismissed in July 2004. It interrupted the first leg of the trial by 5 months.[11] In June 2013 this Supreme Court ruling was vacated because Mtabanengwe, one of the Supreme Court judges in 2004, had also served as chairman of the Advisory Board that reviewed how people were arrested while the Caprivi Region was under a state of emergency on 2 August 1999.[5]

Another claim brought forward by the 13 main accused was one of unlawful arrest—the 13 main accused were found to be unlawfully abducted abroad—was at first successful when judge Hoff ruled in February 2004 that they were indeed "irregularly before the court".[15] The 13 were, however, rearrested for treason 2 days after the court ruling,[16] and sentenced the same year.

Other accused people

All other people charged in this trial are essentially co-accused of these thirteen, charged with lesser offences. They all pleaded "not guilty" to all charges laid out to them.[17] In February 2013, 43 accused were acquitted on all charges and set free when Judge Hoff found that the prosecution's evidence did not support any of the charges they were accused of. The majority of these 43 had been in custody since 1999. The trial of the remaining people has not been concluded yet.[4]

In 2009 alone, 127 civil suits emerging from the alleged mistreatment of the treason detainees were heard.[18] While some of these counterclaims have been dismissed, a large number has been settled out of court.[19]

Delay of the trial

The Caprivi Treason Trial has been delayed by a number of factors, most prominently by its sheer size and the accompanying paper trail. Already in 2007, the trial transcripts amounted to more than 18,000 type-written pages, and 230 full days had been spent in court. This makes it by far the longest[20] and largest[21] trial in the history of Namibia, frequently swallowing around half of all legal assistance funds budgeted by the Namibian Ministry of Justice.[22]

Further delays of the court proceedings were caused by:

Supreme Court judge Johan Strydom already stated in 2002 that the case "has all the makings of a logistical and organisational nightmare for both the prosecution and the defence and will no doubt run for a couple of years rather than months".[11] On 7 February 2012 the State concluded the case for the prosecution. The court record for this trial by then consisted of circa 35,000 pages.[25]

Criticism

Both the massive delays of the trial and the treatment of the accused have been criticised by a host of local, regional, and international organisations.

Already in 2003, Amnesty International called on the Namibian Government to immediately resume the trial.[2] As of 2012, 112 of the accused are still in prison, awaiting Judge Hoff's decision whether or not the State's case is strong enough to keep the accused in jail.[25] Only four of the arrested have ever obtained bail.[26] 19 of the prisoners awaiting trial have died in custody,[25] some of them under questionable circumstances. Frequent reports of maltreatment, torture, medical neglect and unsanitary conditions in the holding cells have been made.[2] Various individuals and groups have called for the pardoning of the convicted, as well as for the release of the accused.[24]

Another point of criticism has been the level of, even alleged, involvement in the sedition attempts of many of the detainees. Except John Samboma, the commander of the Caprivi Liberation Army, most of the alleged masterminds of the secession of the Caprivi are not among the group of people that have been arrested.

A sizeable fraction of the people imprisoned are not even thought to have participated in any violent action but might have been "arrested solely based on their actual or perceived non-violent support for the political opposition in the region, their ethnic identity or their membership of certain organisations". Amnesty International assumes they are actually prisoners of conscience and requested them to be tried or released now.[2]

In 2015, one of the accused sued the government and several officials, saying that he had been wrongfully arrested in 1999 and wrongfully detained until 2012, when he was acquitted.[27]

References

  1. ↑ Lamb, Guy (October 1999). "Civil supremacy of the military in Namibia: A retrospective case study". NamibWeb.
  2. 1 2 3 4 "Namibia: Justice delayed is justice denied. The Caprivi treason trial". Amnesty International. Retrieved 16 June 2009.
  3. ↑ Brigitte Weidlich (7 August 2009). "Pardon Caprivi separatists: Mudge". The Namibian.
  4. 1 2 3 Menges, Werner (12 February 2013). "43 acquitted in treason trial". The Namibian.
  5. 1 2 Menges, Werner (16 July 2013). "Treason accused try to revisit 2004 judgement". The Namibian.
  6. 1 2 3 Inambao, Chrispin (1 September 2004). "No Title". New Era.
  7. ↑ "Mabuku Dies in Exile". The Namibian. 16 July 2008.
  8. ↑ Muraranganda, Elvis (February 2012). "The greak trek". insight Namibia.
  9. ↑ "Appeal Judgment: Government of Namibia and Others vs. Mwilima and Others". Supreme Court of Namibia. 7 June 2002.
  10. ↑ Maritz, Gerhard; Strydom, Johan; Mtambanengwe, Simpson (14 September 2010). "Appeal Judgment: State vs. Malumo and 24 Others" (PDF). Supreme Court of Namibia.
  11. 1 2 3 4 Werner Menges (17 November 2005). "Treason trial stalled until January 2005". The Namibian.
  12. ↑ Werner Menges (9 August 2007). "Long jail terms for 'traitors'". The Namibian.
  13. ↑ "2007 Country Reports on Human Rights Practices, Namibia". U.S Department of State. Retrieved 21 April 2010.
  14. ↑ Werner Menges (17 November 2005). "Undefended treason suspects refuse to challenge witness". The Namibian.
  15. ↑ Werner Menges (24 February 2004). "State suffers shock loss in Caprivi treason case". The Namibian.
  16. ↑ Werner Menges (31 March 2004). "Caprivi 13 release bid back to High Court". The Namibian.
  17. ↑ Werner Menges (9 August 2004). "D-Day for Caprivi treason case – again". The Namibian.
  18. ↑ Catherine Sasman (16 March 2010). "Not too rosy human rights environment". New Era.
  19. ↑ Werner Menges (16 March 2010). "Court dismisses treason suspects' assault claims". The Namibian.
  20. ↑ Werner Menges (8 August 2007). "Main treason trial set to soldier on in September". The Namibian.
  21. 1 2 Werner Menges (2 November 2005). "Caprivi treason trial up and running again". The Namibian.
  22. ↑ Catherine Sasman (12 May 2010). "Justice budgets 12.4% more". New Era.
  23. 1 2 Inambao, Chrispin (24 September 2012). "High treason investigator dead". New Era.
  24. 1 2 Alexus T Kaure (16 June 2009). "Between Legality and Politics: The Caprivi Case". The Namibian.
  25. 1 2 3 Menges, Werner (8 February 2012). "State closes treason case". The Namibian.
  26. ↑ Werner Menges (28 May 2010). "Seventeenth treason death". The Namibian.
  27. ↑
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