Fishrot Six ‘broken’ after bail denial

You could hear a pin drop in the High Court on Friday afternoon, when Judge Shafimana Uietele dismissed the bail application of six of the Fishrot accused who entered the court with high hopes of a release.

The accused - James Hatuikulipi, Sacky Shanghala, Mike Nghipunya, Pius Mwatelulo, Otneel Shuudifonya, and Phillipus Mwapopi - with their legal representatives were evidently broken and crushed with the conclusion of Ueitele’s judgement which began with so ‘much hope’, as one defence lawyer remarked referring to Uietele’s opening remarks.

“I start off this judgment with a quotation of Mohammed, acting judge as he then was, where he said ‘an accused person cannot be held in detention pending his trial as a form of anticipatory punishment, the presumption of the law is that he is innocence until his guilt is established in court. The court will therefore ordinarily grant bail to an accused bail unless this is ging to prejudice justice,” he said.

Defence lawyer Lucius Murorua, representing Shanghala, Hatuikulipi, and Mwatelulo, said afterwards that they are broken by the outcome of the case.

“We are devasted by the judgment and obviously disappointed. We will try and get the judgment and read it, study it, internalise it and decide the way forward. [our clients] they are broken, I mean of course, we were looking forward to a bail that did not happen. It is now what it is, we have to assess the situation and decide the way forward,” said Murorua.

Not convinced

Meanwhile, Uietele agreed that some of the accused have been kept in custody for over two years, however he does not agree that their constitutional rights were infringed because they were not unlawfully detained.

“The personal circumstances that is their health, their business environment, their family relations, their employment, which the applicants put before me, is neither unusual nor do they singly or together warrant the release of the applicants in the interest of justice. Taking all the evidence into consideration, I am satisfied that the applicants have failed to prove that it would be in the interest of justice to grant them bail, to the contrary, the administration of justice will be prejudiced if the application were admitted to bail. The applicant’s application for bail is dismissed,” Uietele said.

In his judgment, Uietele pointed out that while he could not make a ruling on whether the accused were flight risks as insisted by the State, he however agrees with the State that the risk that the applicants are likely to interfere with the investigation, is real.

The State’s evidence includes a case in which James Hatuikuilipi allegedly tried to bribe an anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)officer with N$250 000, as well as allegedly transferring US$4 million from a bank account in United Arabs Emirates (UAE) to an unknown account as well as Mike Nghipunya who allegedly used an unauthorised device to coerce a witness to sign an agreement to protect him.

“The State indicates that its efforts to trace that money (US$4million translating to N$60-70million) is frustrated. I am therefore satisfied that the likelihood that the applications will if released on bail, suppress or distort evidenced relating to that sum of money, is real. I agree with the state that all the applications have not satisfied the court that they will not interfere with the evidence,” he said.

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