The hearing of an application to have separate trials for the ten men charged in the Fishrot fraud, corruption, and racketeering case has been postponed to November.
The hearing is now scheduled to take place on 11 November, after acting judge Moses Chinhengo postponed it in the High Court at Windhoek Correctional Facility on Friday.
The postponement is meant to give one of the accused in the matter, former attorney general and justice minister Sacky Shanghala, time to file an application in which he wants to ask the court to allow him to file an additional sworn statement with the court in support of his application for a separation of trials.
Shanghala, James Hatuikulipi, Pius Mwatelulo, and eight corporate entities and trusts represented by them filed an application in which they are asking Chinhengo to order a separation of trials at the end of August.
They are claiming that a separation of trials will enable them to continue to seek legal representation while the trial of the other accused proceeds.
Shanghala, Hatuikulipi, Mwatelulo, and the first accused in the case, Ricardo Gustavo, are currently not represented by defence lawyers.
The court was informed on Friday that Shanghala and other accused in the matter had a meeting with prosecutor general Martha Imalwa about their situation regarding legal representation on 9 September, and that Imalwa undertook to take the issue up with the Directorate of Legal Aid.
Chinhengo noted during court proceedings on Friday that the application for a separation of trials is based on the fact that Shanghala, Hatuikulipi, and Mwatelulo do not have legal representation. If they obtain legal representation, the basis for their application would fall away, he remarked.
The postponement of the hearing to 11 November means that plea proceedings in the trial, which started in December last year, will remain on hold.
The plea proceedings were interrupted by a failed attempt to get Chinhengo to step down from the case, followed by an unsuccessful bid to have a number of legal questions recorded and sent to the Supreme Court to be decided.
Only four of the 42 charges on which the accused were arraigned before Chinhengo were put to the accused before the plea proceedings were halted.
The charges are linked to allegations that the accused had been involved in a multimillion-dollar scheme to illegally benefit from Namibian fishing quotas from 2011 to 2019.
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