{"id":32243,"date":"2017-02-01T04:02:54","date_gmt":"2017-02-01T04:02:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/oscar-pistorius-prosecutor-gerrie-nel-joins\/"},"modified":"2017-02-01T04:02:48","modified_gmt":"2017-02-01T04:02:48","slug":"oscar-pistorius-prosecutor-gerrie-nel-joins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/oscar-pistorius-prosecutor-gerrie-nel-joins\/","title":{"rendered":"Oscar Pistorius prosecutor Gerrie Nel joins Afriforum"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>{The South African lawyer who led the prosecution of Oscar Pistorius has quit to join a lobby group, accusing the state office of selective prosecution.}<\/p>\n<p>Gerrie Nel has joined AfriForum, a group fighting private prosecution that also aims to protect the rights of white Afrikaners.<\/p>\n<p>He will head the group&#8217;s new private prosecuting unit, which will target state officials and politicians accused of corruption.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Nel is nicknamed the Pitbull.<\/p>\n<p>He was widely praised for his aggressive, calculated and relentless prosecutorial style during the trial of Pistorius, who is serving a six-year prison term for murdering his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in 2013.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Nel accused the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) of not treating everyone equally and says his new role would allow him to &#8220;help ensure that everyone, irrespective of position, is equal before the law&#8221;, a statement on AfriForum&#8217;s website says.<\/p>\n<p>In October last year, the NPA dropped fraud charges against South Africa&#8217;s Finance Minister Pravin Gordhan, in what was seen as politically-motivated allegations, leading to questions about its independence.<\/p>\n<p>Mr Nel will take up cases which the NPA has decided not to prosecute.<\/p>\n<p>AfriForum has brought charges against firebrand opposition leader Julius Malema accusing him urging black South Africans to occupy white-owned farms.<\/p>\n<p>Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, says Mr Nel&#8217;s appointment sends a message to corrupt politicians and officials on national, provincial and local government levels that they can not be safe from prosecution due to their political contacts.<\/p>\n<p>His first assignment will be an investigation to determine which public officials are not being prosecuted despite a strong case against them, the statement says.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"spip-document spip-document-17949 aligncenter\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/en-images.igihe.com\/jpg\/_74142378_74142377.jpg\" alt=\"Gerrie Nel: Gained reputation as a ruthless and merciless prosecutor\" \/><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>{The South African lawyer who led the prosecution of Oscar Pistorius has quit to join a lobby group, accusing the state office of selective prosecution.} Gerrie Nel has joined AfriForum, a group fighting private prosecution that also aims to protect the rights of white Afrikaners. He will head the group&#8217;s new private prosecuting unit, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[100],"byline":[249],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-32243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-justice","tag-africa","byline-bbc"],"bylines":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"contributors":[{"id":249,"name":"BBC","slug":"bbc","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":104}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32243\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32243"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=32243"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=32243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}