Roland Routh
Windhoek High Court Judge Dinnah Usiku yesterday again had to postpone the trial of three men charged with the brutal murder of elderly farmers near Köes in the Keetmanshoop district.
This came after stand-in prosecutor Timo Itula told the court his colleague Marthino Olivier has not yet received a reply to a letter he wrote to legal aid about legal representation for Andries Afrikaner (38) who fired his previous government-sponsored lawyer.
The judge postponed the matter to 4 December to give legal aid another chance to secure representation for Afrikaner.
Afrikaner and his co-accused, Julius Frederick Arndt (41) and Johannes Christiaan (37) face two counts of murder, two counts of housebreaking with intent to rob and robbery with aggravating circumstances, one count of rape alternatively violating a dead body, conspiracy to commit robbery with aggravating circumstances and/or murder and/or rape and housebreaking with intent to steal and theft.
It is alleged that the three accused broke into the house of Gielam Botha (78) and his 80-year old wife Susara Aletta at their farm Lindeshof near Köes during the late night hours of 1 February 2018 and stole at least N$550 in cash, one measuring tape, an electrical plug, a tyre gauge and a bulb.
After the victims discovered the theft, they arranged for burglar bars to be installed at their residence, but before this could be affected, the accused returned the very next night and gained entrance by breaking open windows or doors, the indictment read.
During the ransacking of the residence, it is alleged, they came across the elderly couple and murdered Botha by hitting him with an iron object and shooting him in the mouth with his own .22 rifle.
Thereafter, the court heard, they raped the elderly woman or alternatively had intercourse with her dead body after they stabbed her several times and strangled her with shoelaces.
The indictment further states the accused, after their dastardly deeds, managed to open the garage door and loaded the stolen property onto the victim’s motor vehicle and drove off.
According to the State, the accused acted in common purpose at all material times.
After the gruesome murder was discovered, the police and members of the community launched a massive manhunt and they were arrested within hours of the discovery.
During their various appearances in the Keetmanshoop Magistrate’s Court protests were held against the granting of bail to them.
Arndt and Afrikaner are in custody pending trial at the trial awaiting section of the Windhoek Correctional Facility and Christiaan is free on bail he was granted in the Keetmanshoop Magistrate’s Court.
He finished a sentence imposed on him on a charge of stock-theft barely a month after being granted bail on the murder and robbery charges. – rrouth@nepc.com.na