Category: Justice

Oscar Pistorius has blood on his arm after shooting his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp last year, a retired police officer has told his murder trial.

The court has also been shown a photograph of the South African athlete with blood on his shorts.

He denies murder, saying he shot his girlfriend after mistaking her for an intruder.

The prosecution says he shot Ms Steenkamp after an argument at his house on Valentine’s Day 2013.

On Thursday retired police colonel Schoombie van Rensburg told the court he followed a “trail of blood” up the stairs after arriving at Oscar Pistorius’ home.

Col Van Rensburg, who was initially in charge of the crime scene, said he immediately gave orders for it to be secured.

Defence lawyer Barry Roux has said that evidence from the scene, including eight watches, subsequently went missing.

Col Van Rensburg said he ordered photographs to be taken of the watches because they “looked expensive”.

He said he found the toilet door, through which Ms Steenkamp had been shot, locked.

He said the key was in the outside, whereas Mr Pistorius said he found the key on the inside, after breaking down the door.

The police officer said he found Mr Pistorius’ gun, a 9mm pistol, with blood on it lying on a grey towel inside the bathroom, along with a white mobile phone.

Before Col Van Rensburg began his testimony on Thursday, photographs of Ms Steenkamp’s bloodied head and face were shown in court, prompting Mr Pistorius to vomit.

The South African athlete, who has had both legs amputated, was sick several times on Monday while evidence from the post-mortem examination was presented to court and has also cried on several occasions.

The court was later told that photos of her body would be removed from the police file and not displayed in court.

An Islamic court in northern Nigeria last week ordered four men to be flogged with horsewhips after being found guilty of homosexuality.

The men, aged between 22 and 28, were also fined 20,000 naira (90 euros) after a secret trial at the Upper Sharia Court in the Unguwar Jaki district of the city of Bauchi, a court clerk told the AFP news agency.

Each received 15 lashes carried out in front of the court after sentencing. The four men were forced to lie on the floor of the court to be whipped on their backsides, according to Dorothy Aken’Ova, convenor of the Coalition for the Defense of Sexual Rights Network, who had spoken with the men’s families.

Court clerk Abdul Mohammed said the case was concluded behind closed doors for security reasons after an angry mob attacked the court when the men had first stood trial on January 23, demanding they be executed and forcing the hearing to be suspended.

“The four… on trial were sentenced to 15 strokes and fined 20,000 naira ($125) by the court and the sentence was immediately carried out,” Mohammed said.

“The court session was kept secret from the public and the judgment given and executed before the news filtered into the city,” he said.

The court would adopt a similar strategy on three pending cases, he added.

Sharia justice

The four men were among a number of defendants formally charged by the Bauchi State Sharia Commission on January 6 with belonging to a gay club and receiving $150,000 in donations from the United States for an apparent membership drive.

Four others were brought before a separate Islamic court on the same charges, while a Christian suspect was presented before a secular, state court.

The Sharia justice system runs parallel to secular courts in some of Nigeria’s northern states

Aken’Ova told reporters that the defendants should not have been convicted because their confessions were forced by law agents who beat them.

She warned that they could face further violence in prison should they be unable to pay their fines, which would result in a year behind bars.

The arrests and formal charges came days after it was confirmed that Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan had signed a bill into law banning gay marriage and same-sex unions.

The law, which carries a maximum 14-year prison term for anyone entering such unions and up to 10 years in jail for supporting gay groups and clubs, provoked international condemnation.

There has been a wave of arrests since the passing of the legislation, which reinforces existing laws criminalising homosexuality and gives the Sharia authorities federal backing to enforce anti-gay laws.

A 20-year-old man was flogged in public and fined 5,000 naira on January 16 after being convicted of homosexuality.

He claimed he had been “deceived into sodomy” by a school teacher who had promised to support his education financially.

A friend of Oscar Pistorius has told his murder trial that the athlete “had a big love” for guns.

Darren Fresco said that he had been with him on two occasions when a gun had been fired in public.

Mr Pistorius once accidentally fired a gun in a restaurant but made him take the blame, Mr Fresco said.

The Paralympic athlete denies intentionally killing his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp and says he mistook her for a burglar.

Mr Fresco said that on another occasion, he was driving when Mr Pistorius fired a gun out of a sunroof after police stopped him for speeding.

He said Mr Pistorius became angry after a police officer handled his gun, which was on the back seat of the car.

“You can’t just touch another man’s gun,” said Mr Pistorius, according to Mr Fresco.

“Now your fingerprints are all over my gun. So if something happens, you’re going to be liable for anything that happens,” Mr Pistorius reportedly said.

Mr Pistorius’ ex-girlfriend described the same incident in court in the first week of the trial.

During the first week of Oscar Pistorius’s murder trial in South Africa, the judge presiding over the case has come under fire for giving defence lawyers too much leeway and not protecting witnesses.

With the trial broadcast live on television, presiding Judge Thokozile Masipa has not escaped the scrutiny of millions watching around the world.

Criticism has centred on Masipa permitting a fierce line of questioning from Barry Roux, Pistorius’s defence lawyer known for his hectoring style of cross-examination.

He has reduced two female witnesses to tears and even read one witness’s cell phone number out in court, although he later apologised.

Major South African newspapers have run articles questioning if witnesses are now less likely to come forward, for fear they may face a Roux-like buzz saw.

But his badgering is par for the course, according to some of South Africa’s legal fraternity.

“So far I have not noticed any impropriety from the side of the judge,” said Mary Nel, a senior criminal law lecturer at the University of Stellenbosch.

“Cross examination is a robust court process, it can get really aggressive.”

It is crucial, according to Nel, that the judge does not appear to be taking sides by being too protective of the state witnesses.

“The playing field must be level.”

“What we have seen so far is the cross examining of the state witnesses by the defence, the same will happen when the state gets to the defence witnesses,” she said adding that she expects the same kind of robustness.

Roux criticised

Some have criticised Roux for asking witnesses questions seemingly unrelated to testimony or beyond the witness’s knowledge.

But according to Nel, sometimes “the pieces of the puzzle will be revealed at a later stage”.

Masipa has occasionally stepped in, but some believe she should have intervened more often.

Thea Illsley, a procedural law expert at the University of Pretoria said that the judge had at times been “decidedly leniently” with Roux.

“The judge is giving Roux leeway to paint a bigger picture of the events, to set a background and context… that is understandable,” she said

“Some of the questions seem to be beyond the witnesses knowledge.”

“The judge has been allowing him to ask questions which may be eventually irrelevant.”

For now, most are willing to give Masipa, 66, the benefit of the doubt.

She was appointed a judge in 1998, only the second black woman to be admitted to the bench at the time.

Masipa studied law in her 40s. Before that she was a crime journalist and also was a social worker.

In a decade-and-a-half on the bench, she has presided over criminal cases involving rape and murder, and has spoken out strongly about violence against women.

She handed down a 252-year prison sentence to a serial rapist last year, and has been outspoken against the government’s rights and responsibilities towards ordinary South Africans.

But none of these cases saw the glare of a trial televised around the world.

– AFP