13 Caprivi treason trialists re-arrested

Thirteen of the 120 accused in the Caprivi treason trial were re-arrested on Tuesday, but the grounds for their arrest were unclear. They were released on Monday following an order by the High Court in Grootfontein, 500 kilometres from Windhoek, which said they had been held unlawfully. The 13 were part of a group arrested for taking part in a failed uprising led by the secessionist Caprivi Liberation Army at Katimo Mulilo, the capital of Caprivi, in August 1999, when 13 people were killed. Both the defence and state counsels in the treason trial told IRIN on Tuesday that they were not aware of the reasons for the re-arrest. John Walters, special counsel with the prosecution team said: "The police have said the arrests were not related to the treason trial." The state has already expressed its intention to appeal Monday's High Court judgment in the Supreme Court. Patrick Kauta, the defence counsel, said he had been informed by the police that the 13 were to be charged on Thursday. Under Namibian law all accused must appear before a court of law within 48 hours of arrest. Namibian police merely confirmed the re-arrests. Phil ya Nangoloh of the National Society for Human Rights expressed concern over the re-arrests and said the trial had seen the accused languish in prison for four years amid allegations of torture and other human rights violations. In a special plea lodged in January, the 13 questioned the Namibian court's jurisdiction, arguing that they had been abducted unlawfully from Zambia and Botswana by the Namibian security forces, and stated that they had only been brought to court six months after their arrest. Judge Elton Hoff said in a five-hour long ruling in the Grootfontein High Court on Monday that "12 of the 13 accused were before the court through a process of disguised extradition, dressed up as the deportation of supposedly illegal immigrants from other countries," The Namibian newspaper reported. Hoff further found that the thirteenth accused, Charles Samboma, "had not given his proper consent to be returned to Namibia when, according to the State's evidence, he happened to be given a lift from Zambia to Namibia in the vehicle of one of the Namibian police officers investigating the high treason case". Human rights activists have slammed the repeated delays and postponements in the trial. The remaining 107 accused are still in jail. Twelve people have died while in custody, prompting calls for independent autopsies into the causes of their deaths. The Caprivi strip is a a colonial anachronism, a finger-like projection from northeastern Namibia which shares borders with Angola, Botswana and Zambia, and touching Zimbabwe with its tip. The strip acquired some political significance in the 1980s, when the apartheid regime in South Africa used it as a base for training members of the Angolan rebel movement UNITA, and to attack the Namibian independence movement, SWAPO. Caprivi secessionists argue that historically they were part of the Barotseland empire in modern day Zambia, and allege that they have been marginalised in terms of development spending by Windhoek - a charge denied by the government.