Former Supreme Court Judge Pio Teek has lost a N$23 million lawsuit he had instituted against government.
A Windhoek High Court judge last week upheld an application for absolution after it found Teek did not place any evidence to support his claim against the ministers of safety and security and justice, the prosecutor general and former deputy prosecutor general Danie Small.
Teek also sued prosecutor Innocencia Nyoni, the registrar of the High Court and two police officers. The amounts are made up of economic and financial losses for N$13.66 million, constitutional damages of N$3 million for shock, trauma, pain and suffering, N$3 million for injury to his dignity, and N$3 million for punitive damages.
He was further claiming N$500 000 for cost of suit, including legal costs.
The standoff started near the end of January 2005 when Teek, then a judge of appeal in the Supreme Court, was arrested on charges, including counts of child abduction and rape.
According to Teek, his trial and the investigation were marred by inconsistencies and irregularities characterised by false fabrications and unlawful destruction of material evidence.
He further claimed that the prosecutor general persisted with the prosecution even after the State had failed miserably to convict him by instituting appeals against his acquittals. According to him, this caused an undue lengthy delay in the finalisation of his criminal trial.
The charges against Teek stemmed from allegations that he had picked up two girls, aged nine and 10, respectively, in Katutura in Windhoek on the evening of 28 January 2005. Teek was accused of having taken the minor girls to his Brakwater home, where he allegedly gave them alcohol and sexually molested them.
Teek denied guilt on all of the charges. He was acquitted on all charges, but the State filed an appeal which ended with the Supreme Court setting aside his acquittal on six of the eight charges of child abduction and rape in April 2009.
After the Supreme Court’s ruling, Teek’s trial continued in the High Court, and again ended with him being found not guilty on the remaining six charges in December 2010. The State also appealed against that verdict, but three different acting appeal judges of the Supreme Court finally dismissed that appeal in December 2018.
After failing with several lawsuits he instituted against government agencies, he in February last year instituted the latest one, but the defendants claim that a Supreme Court judgement dismissing his claims for compensation absolved them from liability, and Judge Boas Usiku agreed last week.