|
Back to Index
Cops
free all but 15 after church raid
Jeremy
Gordin and Bonile Ngqiyaza, Pretoria News (SA)
February 10, 2008
http://www.pretorianews.co.za/?fSectionId=&fArticleId=vn20080210084528482C888874
All but 15 of
the 520 alleged illegal immigrants, mainly from Zimbabwe, who were
detained two weeks ago in a midnight
police raid on Johannesburg's Central Methodist Church, have
been released.
The 15 will
appear in court on Monday and Tuesday to face charges related to
the immigration act.
About 141 of
the people arrested in the raid were released from Johannesburg's
central police station after they produced documents allowing them
to be in South Africa. Another 380 were freed because they were
not charged within 48 hours. Another group of 15 tried to get bail
last Friday but had their cases postponed and were sent back to
jail until this week.
Lawyers representing
the Legal Resources Centre (LRC) - headed by George Bizos SC and
including Judge Johann Kriegler, a former constitutional court judge
- returned in a team to the magistrate's court this week after Friday's
events, which some advocates and attorneys described as a "circus".
The presiding
magistrate had said she wanted to move things along so she could
go home to her family; she had refused to allow the people applying
for bail to waive their right to an interpreter; and, in some cases,
according to a report received by Janet Love, the national director
of the LRC, "the magistrate ordered a postponement [of cases]
before the prosecutor had even asked for one" and sent people
back to jail.
However, Bishop
Paul Verryn - whose church allows refugees with nowhere to go to
sleep on its premises - has remained extremely angry and distressed
about the police raid.
"The raid
was allegedly in response to complaints that robbers were living
in the church," said Verryn.
"But there
was no warning beforehand, there was no search warrant produced
- it was the like the worst days of pass raids during the apartheid
era."
Verryn is due
to meet Charles Nqakula, the minister of safety and security, on
Monday and Firoz Cachalia, the Gauteng MEC for safety and security,
has condemned the alleged misbehaviour of the police during the
raid, including theft and physical abuse.
A dreadlocked
Zimbabwean musician, who did not want to be named, woke up from
a deep sleep on the night of the raid and looked straight into the
blinding torchlight of a policeman.
He said people
were not given a chance to fetch their asylum papers or documents.
He said the whole group was carted off in trucks to the Johannesburg
central police station, where it took the whole day for them to
be booked into cells.
A woman who
did not want to be named said some of the policemen had demanded
bribes and made passes at some of the women.
Please credit www.kubatana.net if you make use of material from this website.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License unless stated otherwise.
TOP
|
