Johnathan Paoli
The Johannesburg High Court ruled on Friday that the Minister of Justice and Correctional Services, Ronald Lamola, is completely liable to pay damages to inmates of the Leeuwkop Correctional Centre who had been tortured by prison guards.
The application before Judge Ellem Francis was brought by five inmates who claimed they had been subjected to extensive physical and psychological abuse.
The inmates have alleged they had been assaulted and tortured on 10 August 2014 and unlawfully and wrongfully detained in isolation from 10 to 26 August of the same year.
However, the Minister denied liability and maintained that the officials had applied the necessary proportionate minimum force to defend themselves after the prisoners threw objects including human faeces and refused to vacate their cell.
Judge Francis said that there were material gaps in the testimony of the witnesses for the defendant and in addition, the diagnoses done by doctors and psychiatrists clearly illustrate the dubiousness of the minister’s version of events.
“The version about an attack on officials by inmates was a thought-out version manufactured later to deal with the case around assault and torture. The missiles allegedly thrown changed dramatically over time depending on which official was testifying,” he said.
The court held that the Minister did not sufficiently prove his version of events and ordered him to pay the legal costs of the trial, while the amount sued by the victims is yet to be determined through either negotiations or another trial.
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