Police, military police accused of harassment Suspect stabbed with needle A young navy officer alleges apartheid-style interrogation and threats to his life. Nampol and the Military Police are accused of heavy-handed interrogation, harassment and torture of a young navy officer whom they have accused of gun smuggling from Angola.The navy officer, Natangwe Angula, in an urgent application before the High Court on Friday, asked that the two institutions be prohibited from harassing and threatening him.
The matter was set down for 15 November, by which time the two respondents, police chief Sebastian Ndeitunga and the minister of safety and security, Charles Namoloh, must show cause why the state institutions should not be interdicted and restrained from unlawfully interfering with Angula''s rights.
Angula stated in his founding affidavit that his ordeal started on the morning of 3 September when he was relaxing outside the yard where he lives in a flat behind a house in Walvis Bay when he spotted three or four police vehicles parked on the street.
He later walked into his flat when his landlady, Mamuno Iikela, told him that police officers had talked to her about a housebreaking in the area and had asked her if there was an Angolan man living in one of her flats.
Later that morning, dressed in a large black hat and a white T-shirt, Angula was again sitting outside the gate and was approached by the police, two in civilian clothing and a woman in uniform, who addressed him by his nickname, Deko.
He said the police wanted to know where he was stashing AK47s and when he had returned from Angola. The military police arrived an hour later and repeated the questioning.
Angula said the police also accused his landlady of having turned her house into a military base where weapons were hidden.
He said the harassment continued and by 18:00 that Saturday he and his brother, who is also in the army, went to the police station in Kuisebmond to seek an explanation. There they were told that the police were only doing their job. Back home, he said, the police continued their surveillance outside the yard.
On the morning of 4 September, the female police officer returned with members of the Special Reserve Force, who ransacked his flat, allegedly searching for weapons smuggled from Angola.
Angula said during this ordeal the police did not present a search warrant and were reluctant to identify themselves. One had identified himself only as Detective Sergeant Kabuku and another said he was chief officer John Katenda of the military police.
The surveillance escalated during the early evening of Tuesday, 6 September, when the police told him that they would “move around” with him.
He said he was forced into the back of a Mercedes-Benz with the number plate GRN 10, in which he was driven towards the Rooikop Military Base outside Walvis Bay. After about 25 minutes of driving, he was again questioned about the alleged weapon smuggling and told that the police were “prepared to physically eliminate” him.
Angula said in the days following the police kept up their surveillance and continued to follow him around. On 29 September he approached the law firm Angula Incorporated, which wrote a letter to the police and the ministry to ask what the interrogation was about.
The police and ministry did not reply to these letters and on 5 October Angula was approached by four men who showed him their guns and told him that they had an admission-of-guilt document that they wanted him to sign. They then ordered him into a Toyota Land Cruiser and drove towards the vicinity of the Welwitschia Hospital on the way to the Rooikop military base.
They then took him to Dune 7 where he was given a shovel to dig a hole. He said there he was also stabbed with an injection needle but he could not say what the content, if any, of the syringe was.
Angula took flight when a tourist vehicle approached the scene and hid in the dunes until he felt safe. He later walked to the public transport hub where he was able to hitch a ride with a truck to Omwuandi in northern Namibia.
His family brought him to Windhoek where he filed the court application in which he states that if the Namibian police are not interdicted and restrained, they may subject him to further harassment.
CATHERINE SASMAN