Nine people appeared in Windhoek Magistrate's Court on 21 May on charges under the Terrorism Act relating to the murders of 4 whites and the death of a black police detective sergeant over a 4 month period. A tenth person was charged in his absence. No evidence was led at the brief court sitting and the accused, 9 men and one woman, were not required to plead. They were all remanded in custody until 25 June, after which they are due to appear at a summary-trial in the Supreme Court, probably in Swakopmund.
The accused are:- FILEMON NANGOLA (25); SACHARIA NASHANDI (no details); RISTO NAKANYALA (34); ALBEUS HENRICH (23); MARIUS ISAK (24); JOHANNES AMUTENGA (46); KAREL NAMPALA (26); SOLOMON MBANGO (21); GABRIEL WILLEM (20); and RAGEL SHIFOTOLA, a 34-year-old woman.
The ten are alleged by the State to have been 'directly or indirectly involved in the "Kalkhügel" and "Okatjiho" murders in December 1975 and February 1976, and in the killing of Detective Sergeant Cedekias Okamb at a police shoot-out in Katutura on the night of 19 April 1976.
On 21 December 1975, a 39-year-old white woman, Shirley Louw, and her son Bertus, 12, were shot dead by two unidentified assailants at their farm, Kalkhügel, near Grootfontein in north eastern Namibia. Two months later, on 16 February 1976, a white farmer, Gerd Walther and his wife Elke were killed at Okatjiho, a farm 17 miles from Okahandja on the road to Swakopmund. Fingerprint evidence was subsequently used by the police to establish that the armed men alleged to be responsible were the same in each case. On 19 April the two men, by this time identified as Filemon Nangola and Kanisius Heneleshi, a 22-year-old Ovambo, were tracked down to a small house in Katutura township outside Windhoek, belonging to Ragel Shifotola. The four month police investigation had been a full-scale affair, headed by Police Chief Brigadier H.V. Verster, with the assistance of Colonel Carel Coetzee of the Johannesburg Murder and Robbery Squad and a number of other top South African detectives.
In the course of a police ambush and shoot-out, Filemon Nangola was wounded and captured, and Detective Okamb was shot dead. Ragel Shifotola, whose husband was reported to have left Namibia for Tanzania some time previously, was arrested and was expected to be charged with "aiding and abetting the terrorists". Kanisius Heneleshi, however, managed to escape and was still at large in mid-June despite a massive police manhunt. At a press conference on 20 April, Brig. Verster maintained that although the Kalkhügel and Okatjiho murders had been "senseless, without motive and pointless", the two men were "trained infiltrators" and it was expected that they would be found to be "Swapo-orientated".
The details of the charges against the remaining 8 accused are not known and it is not clear how they came to be arrested.
