Bomb threat probe cold

NO ONE had been taken in for questioning in connection with the Virgin Active bomb scare that sent shockwaves throughout Namibia since Monday evening.

By yesterday afternoon, Khomas regional crime investigations’ coordinator, deputy commissioner Silvanus Nghishidimbwa, admitted that there were no leads for the police to follow up. “When there are no leads, there are no leads. When you pick up a pen in the street, it is not easy to determine who dropped the pen.”

Moreover, their probe is made more difficult because the piece of toilet paper on which the bomb threat had been scribbled was found in a public toilet, Nghishidimbwa said.

This comes amidst the Prevention and Combating of Terrorist and Proliferation Activities Act stipulating that someone, like an accused who is convicted in connection with a bomb threat, is liable for lifelong imprisonment. The legislation, criminalising “any act committed by a person with the intention of instilling terror and which is a violation of the criminal laws of Namibia and which may endanger the life, physical integrity or freedom of, or cause serious injury or death to, any person, or group of persons, or which causes or may cause damage to public or private property, natural resources, the environment…”, was enacted as recently as 2014.

At the time of Monday evening’s events, 300 clients are said to have been training various aspects of their anatomy, it has since been revealed. It is unclear how many of the patrons were male. This is relevant in the investigation, because a gym employee picked up the note in the men’s bathroom.

Twelve Virgin Active staff members kept the fort at the time of the incident, general manager Manfred Ruhl confirmed yesterday afternoon. Furthermore, Nghishidimbwa said, it is not known how long the note had been lying on the floor before it was picked up, and whether or not the author was still in the gym in Kleine Kuppe at the time, or had left.

The Namibian spoke to Gunther Ling, a manager at Ohlthaver & List, at the scene on Monday evening, who said he in fact also saw the note.

Ling was on a gym bicycle at about 17h50 when an alarm stopped all fitness hopefuls in their tracks.

Abe Malherbe, dressed in swimming trunk and a towel, is a Windhoek-based lawyer, who said he was in the swimming pool when the chaos erupted. “As I lifted my head to catch breath, there was pandemonium.” Nghishidimbwa yesterday afternoon said the police view the incident in a very serious light. “Those are not things to make jokes [about].”

He also lashed out at the fact that precious resources were wasted in the process.

Regarding a denial from certain police fronts that no illegal drugs were found at the scene, Nghshidimbwa yesterday afternoon dropped a bombshell. “I am still not at liberty to say much about that. I have heard about it, but have not yet been reliably informed.” A gym employee maintained at the scene that illicit drugs were confiscated from the bag of a female patron, an allegation which the gym’s management claim is not true.

Meanwhile, Virgin Active’s head of strategic communications, Les Aupiais, confirmed that disciplinary procedures are underway to deal with the male member who had a firearm in his possession – in contravention with the exercise establishment’s policies.

Nghishidimbwa said the police’s bomb squad, which following the incident, is at the centre of social media mockery because of a lack of visible protective gear, found no explosive substance. Virgin Active reopened its doors yesterday morning.

Aupiais extended an invitation to all traumatised patrons to approach the gym’s management to assist with therapy.Upon enquiry, Dr Shaun Whittaker, a clinical psychologist in the capital, said the possibility of post-traumatic stress disorder is very likely. However, he said people experience events differently, and those who were directly confronted with the note as well as those who may have been previously traumatised are more at risk of further trauma.