Three SWAPO supporters continued to accuse the Windhoek security police of coercing them into signing false statements, when they reappeared before a Windhoek Magistrates Court at the beginning of April.
The three women, Lea HISKIA (22) (previously spelt HISIKA), Belinda ONESMUS (17) and Sarah MUFETI (23), were charged with perjury after they refused to act as state witnesses against SWAPO members Alex KAMAUNJU (28) and Hans ARNOLD (28). Arnold (who is also the Secretary of the Windhoek Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace) and Kamaunju were acquitted on 15 March 1982 of assisting the women to leave Namibia illegally. At the time of the trial the women, together with a man, Sam KAMDU, were all serving six month prison terms for having illegally crossed the border into Botswana. Their sentences had been imposed by Gobabis Magistrates court on 21 January, a few days after their arrest in the border area.
When the three women were brought from prison to court to testify against Arnold and Kamaunju, they refuted their prepared affidavits, saying that they had been coerced by the security police with threats of extension of sentence and torture if they did not sign, and alternatively, offers of money and their freedom in return for their co-operation. They were declared to be hostile witnesses and charged with perjury. On being brought before a Windhoek magistrate on 6 April on this charge, they repeated their accusations of coercion. Lea Hiskia revealed that at the time of their arrest near the Botswana border, she had been trying to get to Zambia to study medicine.
The case was provisionally postponed to the end of April, but no further reports appeared at this time. The women were due to complete their six month prison sentences in July.
SECRETS ACT TRIAL
An appeal by a Johannesburg journalist, James Winston BEAUMONT (23), against a three year prison sentence imposed in Namibia under the South African Official Secrets Act, was upheld by the Windhoek Supreme Court of Appeal at the beginning of May.
Beaumont, a sub-editor with the Johannesburg Star, had just completed military duty with the Signals Corps Sector 50 at Gobabis Military Camp when he was arrested in 1981. Extracts of call signals and radio frequencies, taken from classified defence documents, were found in his luggage. He was sentenced in Windhoek on 24 August, the court having concluded that the material had been illegally extracted for his own personal use.
An earlier three year suspended sentence imposed for a similar offence in 1979 was also affected by the appeal. Beaumont was out on bail at the time, reporting twice weekly to the John Vorster Square Police Station in Johannesburg.
