Posted on 02/06/2004 6:44:04 AM PST by NativeNewYorker
The Lesbian and Gay Equality Project expressed "extreme concern" on Friday over claims that evidence was being fabricated to discredit a witness before the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison maladministration.
Commission evidence leader Graham Barlow on Thursday named former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock and Pretoria local prison head Nico Baloyi in this alleged plot.
"If true, it is contemptible that the forces of apartheid are attempting to influence a democratic process established to protect the rights of the poorest of the poor," the equality project said in a statement.
It urged President Thabo Mbeki, Correctional Services Minister Ben Skosana and the commission itself to ensure that any attempts to "pervert the ends of justice" were thoroughly probed.
Barlow told commission chairman Thabani Jali on Thursday that Baloyi is alleged to have asked a prisoner to give false testimony to discredit witness Louis Karp -- who claims to have been raped and abused while jailed in 2001 and 2002.
This prisoner, a former policeman, was allegedly helping prison warders draw up false statements for submission to the commission, Barlow said.
He added that De Kock, also an inmate of Pretoria Central Prison, had been implicated in this collusion.
De Kock was sentenced in 1996 to two life jail sentences plus another 212 years in prison in 89 criminal charges including fraud, conspiracy to murder, and murder.
He has received amnesty on some of the counts, but the two life sentences still stand.
Barlow declined to reveal the name of the source of the allegations to the commission as he feared for that person's safety. But he indicated that the individual was prepared to testify before the commission.
"We will be pursuing this matter, because if the allegations are correct, it amounts to an attempt to side-track and derail the commission," Barlow said.
The equality project on Friday called for measures to protect the commission's integrity and the safety of the source.
Karp, a homosexual former prisoner, spent one year and eight months in prison awaiting trial on a charge of possessing a stolen vehicle.
He was eventually given a suspended five-year sentence. Among other allegations, Karp said he was sold by a prison warder in May 2001 to a group of four male prisoners who raped him regularly over a period of two months.
He also claimed he was forced to perform oral sex on the warder, Thokozane Nxumalo.
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