The Times Sunday has enlisted the help of human rights organization Amnesty International in its fight to find out the truth behind the police shooting of Ntokozo Ngozo.
The newspaper contacted Amnesty International for help once it heard from witnesses that Ngozo was shot in cold blood by police while unarmed.
Meanwhile Swazi Police has said it will hold its own internal inquiry into the circumstances of the shooting with one of its own regional commanders at its head.
Amnesty International has taken up the case and has hired lawyers to investigate. One of the first things the lawyers did was to work with an independent pathologist from Durban, South Africa.
The pathologist refused to start work on Ngozo’s body because an X-ray had not been taken of the corpse. The Times Sunday reported (19 August 2007) that police tried to have the body examined without having an X-ray taken. It reported the pathologist saying that taking an X-ray was a standard procedure before post mortems and he was not prepared to break the rules. It was the police’s responsibility to arrange an X-ray. Eventually an X-ray was taken and a post mortem performed. The result of the post mortem has not been released.
Amnesty International, a worldwide movement of people who campaign for internationally recognized human rights, has previously reported on the failure of the Swazi government to call the police to account. On 20 January 2006 it released a statement to renew its call ‘on the government of Swaziland to take immediate and visible steps to prevent the torture and unlawful killing of crime suspects and political opponents by the police.’
The statement said that Amnesty International had written to King Mswati III as Swaziland’s head of state, ‘to express its concern that the government's failure to act against torture is persisting, contrary to the obligations of Swaziland under international and regional human rights treaties it has ratified and contrary to the new Constitution's Bill of Rights. The alleged torture of some of the detainees currently facing trial for treason is one more manifestation of the consequences of the government's long-standing failure to make the police accountable for their actions.
‘In failing to take measures to prevent torture or ill-treatment, to promptly and impartially investigate reports of torture or ill-treatment, or to bring suspected perpetrators to justice, the government is repeatedly ignoring the new Constitution's Bill of Rights, the findings of independent experts and coroners, the criticisms of police conduct made by judicial officials at trials, and court judgments upholding the claims for redress lodged by victims of human rights violations. It is also ignoring appeals made by civil society organizations for police conduct to be consistent with international human rights standards.’
You can read the full statement from Amnesty International here
Amnesty International has been monitoring alleged human right abuses in Swaziland for many years. To read some of the organization’s reports on Swaziland click here
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