Angolan lawyer’s arrest, torture condemned by SADC Lawyers’ Association

13 March 2020 · Carmel Rickard

Angolan lawyers are in uproar over an incident in which one of their profession was detained, tortured and charged by police. According to a statement by the Southern African Develoment Community Lawyers' Association, the lawyer, Eugenio Marcolino, had been appearing in court when the police detained him.

Read the SADC-LA statement of concern

Lawyers in Angola are planning a protest against the arrest and torture of one of their colleagues late last month.

The SADC Lawyers Association says it has learned ‘with a deep sense of shock and regret’ that advocate Eugenio Francisco Marcolino had been arrested by the police in Benguela, Angola.

Torture

After he was arrested, he was ‘subjected to torture and detention,’ says SADC-LA. Criminal action was then brought against him in the regional court. ‘All this occurred while he was in the process of opposing, through legal process, a determination of the police commander that Advocate Marcolino believed to be illegal.’

SADC-LA says that according to reports it had received the police also used full force to prevent counsel for Marcolino and his supporters from accessing the court room for his trial.

‘The same police force (is) on record attempting to forcibly remove the advocate from hospital where he was receiving critical medical care after torture at the hands of the police.’

Strong protest

In its statement, SADC-LA records its strong protest at the way that the police used their powers to ‘arrest, deploy court process and physically impede the independent and legitimate practice of law by a fully registered advocate in defence of the public interest.’

SADC-LA adds that it has learnt that this is not an isolated event. Rather, it is one of a series of recent cases involving attacks on legal practitioners ‘in the course of executing their constitutional mandate. Such acts have the effect of intimidating lawyers and preventing them from performing to the best of their ability out of fear. This in turn violates the constitutionally guaranteed right to legal representation for all citizens.’

Carmel Rickard

About the author

Recent articles by Carmel Rickard

‘No justification for the unjustifiable’: Lesotho’s ombud slams grand-scale torture, assault in Maseru prison

22 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Lesotho’s national ombud, Tlotliso Angelina Polaki, has issued a scathing report on massive-scale torture and assaults that took place in Maseru’s central correctional institution during December 2023, leaving about 95% of the inmates of the prison injured, one dead and one who is now wheelchair-bound and will never walk again.

Major court decision on image rights benefits Ugandan soccer players

21 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Members of Uganda’s national soccer team from the period around 2007/8 have just been awarded a payout against MTN Uganda by the commercial court. The telecom giant had a year-long contract with Proline, the players’ originating development soccer club, allowing it to use the players’ images for advertising. But MTN had continued to use their images even after that contract expired on the basis that it had a sponsorship agreement with Fufa, soccer’s governing body in Uganda. The players then challenged MTN in court, through Proline, and have now won a significant damages award. But the judgment exposed some serious flaws in the way that Fufa has approached the question of using the image rights of its senior players, and the court commented that this is a ‘case study’ for why Fufa needs to sort out its contractual arrangements with senior players.

Executive interference in Ugandan court decisions continues – this time by the justice minister

21 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Uganda’s minister of justice, Norbert Mao, has taken a leaf straight from the book of the country’s president, Yoweri Museveni. This week, the minister wrote to the principal judge of the Ugandan high court, asking that the judge directly intervene in a matter that has been brought to his attention by an MP on behalf of a constituent. Mao asked for the ‘immediate administrative intervention’ in the matter by the principal judge. Earlier this year, Museveni wrote a similar letter to the chief justice of Uganda, also requesting intervention in a matter, and the CJ later indicated that this was not the first time it had happened.

Is rape by family members treated too lightly by the law?

19 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

The high court has sent the case of a Malawian teenager, charged with raping his 89-year-old grandmother, back to the magistrate’s court for a possible re-trial because the court had wrongly prosecuted a case of rape instead of incest. If convicted in a re-trial, however, Malawi’s incest law could see the accused sentenced to a mere five years. Malawi’s penal code provides for a significant difference between the sentence to be imposed when a man rapes a close family member, and in a case where the two are not related. When they are unrelated, the code provides that a rape offender ‘shall be liable to be punished with death or with imprisonment for life’ (However, Malawi has had what amounts to a moratorium on carrying out the death penalty since 1992.) By contrast, ‘incest by males’, is categorised in the code as a ‘felony’, and anyone convicted ‘shall be liable for imprisonment for five years’. There is an exception: if it is proved ‘that the female person is under the age of 16, the offender shall be liable to imprisonment for life’.

Prominent SA advocates lose battle over conviction in Namibian courts for working without a permit, misleading immigration officials

6 March 2024
Carmel Rickard

Two prominent South African advocates have just lost their last hope of squashing their convictions in the Namibian courts. Johannesburg advocates, Mike Hellens SC and Dawie Joubert SC, had been found guilty on two counts, first, working as legal practitioners without an employment permit, and second, giving false or misleading information to immigration officers when they entered the country in 2019. Though they had gone to Namibia to appear in court in a bail application, they told the immigration officials they were there for a ‘visit’ and for a ‘meeting’. Both appealed against their conviction but they had also asked for a judicial review of the decision. In the high court they lost their appeal but won on the review. The outcome in both matters were taken to the apex supreme court for a final word. In December 2023, they lost their appeal at the supreme court. What would that same court say when the state appealed against the review finding? The supreme court has now given its answer: it found the review, that had favoured Hellens and Joubert, was wrongly decided, and set it aside, awarding costs against the two advocates in both the high court and the supreme court.