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Namibia: Grandmother Jailed Over Deadly Beating of Boy
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The Namibian (Windhoek)
2 May 2008
Posted to the web 2 May 2008
Werner Menges
Windhoek
THE grandmother and a neighbour of the late Michael Olugodhi - a boy who died a violent, painful death after a prolonged beating at his home in northern Namibia almost three and a half years ago - were each sentenced to 15 years' imprisonment for his murder on Wednesday.
Acting Judge John Manyarara sentenced Olugodhi's grandmother, Kaarina Josef, and her neighbour, Gideon David, after convicting them on a charge of murder earlier on Wednesday.
Josef, who has told the court she does not know her own age but is estimated to be in her sixties, and David (25) were accused of murdering Olugodhi at Omaalala, a village in the Oshakati district, by beating him to death on November 7 2004.
Their trial started in the High Court in Windhoek last week with Josef and David both pleading not guilty to a count of murder.
During the trial, each of them accused the other of having been responsible for the beating that claimed Olugodhi's life.
Acting Judge Manyarara convicted them both of murder without a direct intention to kill.
He found that they had shared a common purpose to assault Olugodhi after Josef, who had raised Olugodhi since shortly after his birth, had discovered that four dried fish were missing from her home - and presumably had been eaten by her grandson - on the day before Olugodhi's death.
Olugodhi died a painful death, the court heard when the doctor who performed the post-mortem testified in the trial last week.
Dr Yury Vasin told Acting Judge Manyarara that he counted more than 70 injuries on the front of Olugodhi's body, and more than 70 injuries on the back.
The prosecution alleged that Josef had summoned David to her home on the morning of November 7 2004 so that he could help her punish her grandson.
Olugodhi was then tied to a tree with a long piece of electrical cord and severely beaten with sticks, it was alleged.
Acting Judge Manyarara accepted that Josef, who admitted that she had asked David to "discipline" the boy and that she had cut off tree branches and gave these to David to beat her grandson with, could not have carried out the fatal beating alone, as David claimed she had done.
A photograph showing the boy's injuries was "disgusting", Acting Judge Manyarara commented while hearing arguments from defence lawyers Marlene Dammert and Zagrys Grobler and State advocate Sandra Miller before the sentencing.
The photo shows Olugodhi, dressed only in shorts, lying face down on a sandy floor under a thatched roof at his grandmother's homestead.
Dark bruises, estimated to be about thumb-size, can be seen all over his back, arms, legs and also on his face.
"That child must have been through hell in the last part of his life," Miller remarked when she addressed the court before the sentencing.
Acting Judge Manyarara commented during the sentencing: "The violence was carried out in the most brutal manner imaginable.
The deceased was tied to a tree and assaulted at length all over the body, causing not less than a 140 injuries observed by the doctor.
"The reason for the assault was that the deceased had eaten four dried fish, whose size was not disclosed."
He said the overriding concern in the case was that assaulting children for any reason, let alone the reasons in this case, is unacceptable in Namibian society.
The aim of sentences imposed in murder cases in the High Court has been to deter all forms of the taking of human lives, and the same applies in the case of Josef and David, Acting Judge Manyarara indicated.
He said the crime had been a joint enterprise between Josef and David, and for that reason it would in his view be unjust to differentiate between the two accused persons on the ground of their age difference alone.
Josef and David both made a living from farming, the court heard.
Dammert told the court that according to her instructions Josef, who is a widow who had seven children, of which three are still alive, has been ostracised by her community since the incident.
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The people in her community have taken the side of David in the matter and are blaming her for killing her grandson, Dammert said.
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