OPINION
Ahmed Timol: The prosecution of Jan Rodrigues (VI) 29 May 2019 James Myburgh & Jeremy Gordin on the deeply flawed basis of the NPA's murder case against the former police clerk 1. On October 12, 2017 Judge Billy Mothle found at the end of the reopened (or second) inquest into the 1971 death of Ahmed Timol that Timol’s death “was brought about by an act of having been pushed from the 10th floor or roof of (then) John Vorster Square to fall to the ground” and that there existed prima facie evidence implicating Timol’s two interrogators, Captains Johannes Zacharias van Niekerk and Johannes Hendrik Gloy (both dead), for being responsible for this. The judge also noted that Joao “Jan” Anastacia Rodrigues, now 80, had “on his own version, participated in the cover-up to conceal the crime of murder as an accessary [sic] after the fact, and went on to commit perjury by presenting contradictory evidence before the 1972 and 2017 inquests. He should accordingly be investigated with a view to his prosecution.” Although Rodrigues was implicated as an “accessory” and/or as a perjurer, he was, on 30 July 2018, charged with murder by the National Prosecuting Authority. Since then, on March 28, 2019, Rodrigues has applied for a permanent stay of prosecution before a full bench of the Gauteng high court. As of today, no judgment has been issued. The core of the state’s case may be said to have been presented by Advocate Torie Pretorius in his replying affidavit to Rodrigues’ stay of prosecution application. The state’s case avers that Timol “sustained at least 35 noted injuries, 27 of which were sustained” before the death fall. The trial court would now decide whether Timol, “with extensive bruising, a depressed skull fracture, a fractured left jaw, a dislocated left ankle” was able to rush to the window, open it, and jump out, as Rodrigues has claimed. The theme of almost all the reporting and commentary on this case has been one of impatience at justice long denied. There has been very little
critical scrutiny of the underlying basis for the prosecution. This is odd, for as we shall try to explain, there is a great deal about the version accepted by Judge Mothle that does not make particular sense. 2. On the late evening of Friday 22 October 1971 two Indian men, travelling in a light-yellow Ford Anglia, were stopped at a routine police road block on Fuel Road in Coronationville, Johannesburg. In the boot of the car the police discovered hundreds of banned African National Congress and South African Communist Party leaflets, as well as copies of extensive communications with the SACP in London. The two men – Ahmed Timol, a teacher and underground SACP operative, and Salim Essop, a third-year medical student at Wits – were handed over to the Security Police and taken to police headquarters at John Vorster Square. The correspondence between Timol and his handlers in London was an intelligence windfall because it provided detailed descriptions of how the Party communicated with their operatives in South Africa. It also contained the names of many in the tightly knit Roodepoort Indian community that Timol had told the SACP he would like to draw into illegal work, or recruit into the Party, including Essop. In almost all these cases Timol had not actually done so. The Security Police believed however that they had uncovered a secret Communist Party ring in the Indian community, one responsible for distributing often highly inflammatory propaganda aimed at inciting the black population to revolt violently against the white minority in South Africa. Over the next few days the Security Police round-
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