Detainees held under Proclamation AG 9 were entitled to be detained in a cell of reasonable size, in hygienic conditions, and not to be held in solitary confinement without exercise or work, a full bench of the Windhoek Supreme Court ruled on 2 April 1984.
The court was commenting in a 46-page judgement on allegations of torture submitted by 15 former detainees. The affidavits had been submitted in support of an urgent application brought by three detainees in November 1983 to restrain members of the security police from assaulting, pressurising or holding them in solitary confinement, on spare diets without exercise and medical attention. The three detainees, Pastor AUSIKU, Gideon NESTOR, and Severinus SITEKETA were released without charge soon after the application was filed.
Commenting on the 15 affidavits, the judge said interrogation methods used on detainees by the security police and Koevoet, if proved to be true, presented a most disturbing picture of methods employed by the security branch. The applications contained allegations of inhuman and severe assaults, including the application of electric shocks to parts of the detainees' bodies in order to obtain information.
These methods were commonly referred to as 'third degree'. They were not authorised in any of the laws of the territory, and the court would, in appropriate cases, take the strongest measures to prevent them from taking place.
The court ruled that, had the three detainees still been in detention, they would have been refused an interdict seeking to restrain the police from assaulting them, since there was insufficient evidence to support the application. Although the three detainees had been assaulted, and had a right not be assaulted, it was not clearly proven that future assaults would be committed upon them.
The respondents in the case, the Minister of Police, the head of Security Police, the head of Koevoet, the Administrator General and six security policemen, were ordered to pay half the applicants' costs.
