Second treason trial sentencing in October

The seven men convicted in the second Caprivi high treason trial are due to be sentenced in October.

Acting judge Petrus Unengu postponed the men’s sentencing to 14 October at the end of a presentence hearing in the High Court at Windhoek Correctional Facility yesterday.

Unengu closed off the hearing by telling the seven convicted men that sentencing is a difficult task to perform.
He said to punish fellow human beings is not an easy task and he would need time to consider the sentences to be imposed on them.

The seven – Progress Munuma (64), Shine Samulandela (59), Manuel Makendano, Alex Mushakwa (62), Frederick Ntambilwa (62), Hoster Ntombo (61) and John Tembwe (57) – were found guilty of high treason, the unauthorised importation of weapons into Namibia and the supply and possession of weapons, unlawful possession of ammunition and contraventions of Namibia’s immigration legislation – in a judgement delivered on 29 July.

Unengu concluded that it was proven during the men’s retrial, which started in June 2014, that they took part in the activities of a separatist organisation in the Zambezi region from September 1998 to December 2003.

They were involved in plans to take up arms against the government in the Zambezi region, then known as the Caprivi region, which they did not consider to be part of Namibia, Unengu found.

He also found that the accused had a duty to report the activities of a separatist organisation in the region to the authorities, but failed to do so because they themselves took part in those activities or associated themselves with it.

The seven men, together with five co-accused, went through a first trial in the High Court between 2005 and 2007. That trial ended with 10 of them being convicted of high treason and sentenced to prison terms of either 30 or 32 years each in August 2007.

The Supreme Court set aside their convictions and sent their case back to the High Court for a retrial in July 2013, after finding that the judge who presided over the first trial should have recused himself from the matter when he was asked to do so following his dismissal of a jurisdiction challenge raised by the accused.

In the trial before Unengu, the accused raised the same jurisdiction challenge – again without success – and then raised a special plea, based on claims that the Zambezi region is not legally part of the territory of Namibia.

Unengu rejected that special plea in April 2018. After that, the hearing of evidence on the merits of the charges against the accused started in October 2018.

Defence lawyer Ilse Agenbach, representing Munuma, Samulandela, Makendano, Mushakwa and Ntombo, argued on Monday that they have been convicted of political crimes and can be categorised as political prisoners or prisoners of conscience.

All of them have been in jail for more than 20 years and served six years of their previous sentences, before those were set aside by the Supreme Court, Agenbach said.

She argued that her clients are not a threat to society and should be given suspended sentences.

Jorge Neves, the defence lawyer representing Ntambilwa and Tembwe, argued they were pawns used by secessionist leader Mishake Muyongo.

Ntambilwa and Tembwe have paid for their wrongdoing and further imprisonment will be inhumane, Neves argued.

Deputy prosecutor general Lourens Campher argued yesterday that the accused were responsible for part of the delays that resulted in their retrial reaching its conclusion only now.

The seven accused did not testify in mitigation of sentence and did not express any remorse to the court or show they want to reconcile with the Namibian nation, which wants to put the treason that happened in the then Caprivi region more than 20 years ago behind it, Campher argued.

With the sentences to be imposed on them, the Namibian nation must see that people who committed crimes against it will not receive a mere slap on the wrist, he also argued.