The now 80-year-old is asking the court for a permanent stay of prosecution.
Former apartheid security branch officer Joao Rodrigues’s legal representative on Thursday faced a full bench at the Johannesburg High Court in a desperate attempt to rescue his client from standing trial for the 1971 murder of Ahmed Timol.
The original inquest, held in 1972, concluded that Timol committed suicide, with most of the evidence being centred on Rodrigues’s testimony.In 2017, judge Billy Mothle ruled that Timol was murdered.Family, friends and members of the public filled the gallery at Thursday’s hearing, wearing T-shirts with Timol’s face printed on the front and, on the back, the names of apartheid activists who died in custody.
Advocate Kennedy Tsatsawane SC, arguing for the state, dismissed Cilliers’s argument. The state did not need the testimony of the deceased officers , he said, because according to Rodrigues, he was the only one who saw Timol jump out of the window.
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