Ex-cop jailed for life over murder of sons

A FORMER police constable who was convicted of having murdered his two sons at Gobabis five years ago, committed crimes that were brutal and vicious in the extreme, a judge commented before sentencing him to two terms of life imprisonment yesterday.

Albertus !Ganeb’s killing of his two sons left the Gobabis community in shock and disbelief, judge Dinnah Usiku remarked during !Ganeb’s sentencing in the High Court at the Windhoek Correctional Facility. The crimes that !Ganeb committed were brutal and vicious in the extreme, and this justified having him removed from society permanently, judge Usiku said.

She sentenced !Ganeb (33) to two life terms of imprisonment on the two counts of murder on which he was found guilty, and to two years’ imprisonment on each of the two assault charges on which he was also convicted. One of the life prison terms and the two sentences of two years’ imprisonment were ordered to run concurrently with the other term of life imprisonment.

The effect of this is that !Ganeb would have to spend 25 years in prison before he may be eligible to be released on parole.

Although !Ganeb denied guilt throughout his trial, the judge found that it had been proven that he carried out a fatal knife attack on his sons – Tertius Swartz (7) and Gregory Swartz (4) – at Gobabis on 25 April 2014.

The two boys were stabbed multiple times during the attack on them. Tertius died at the scene of the stabbing at !Ganeb’s house, while Gregory died in a Windhoek hospital six days later.

The assault charges on which !Ganeb was also convicted were based on allegations that he assaulted his sons’ mother, Romilly Swartz, by punching her in the face with a clenched fist during October 2013, and by hitting her on the forehead with a police baton during 2014.

At the time of the killing of his sons, !Ganeb was suspecting that Swartz was romantically involved with another man, after discovering that she had been in cellphone contact with the other man.

!Ganeb did not testify in his own defence during the trial, but claimed in a plea explanation that he had been heavily intoxicated on the afternoon that his sons were stabbed, and that he could not recall what happened.

Having been convicted, he testified in mitigation of sentence and told the court that because he did not recall the events that culminated in the deaths of his sons, he felt he was not responsible for their deaths.

Although he did not take full responsibility for the killing of the boys, !Ganeb conceded that he had a part in their deaths, explaining that this was because he had left them unguarded at his house, and that he thus failed as a father to protect them, judge Usiku noted.

With !Ganeb continuing to claim that he was not guilty of the crimes, the judge commented that he showed no remorse throughout his trial.

!Ganeb, who has been in custody since his arrest on 25 April 2014, was not represented by a lawyer during the last stage of his trial, after his defence lawyer withdrew from his case in February last year. State advocate Palmer Kumalo represented the prosecution.