Joshlin went missing from her home in the Middelpos informal settlement in Saldanha Bay on 19 February last year.
(Executive mayor Andrè Truter/Facebook)
The defence lawyer for Jacquen “Boeta” Appollis, the first accused in the trial about the alleged kidnapping and trafficking of Joslin Smith, on Friday said his client had been tortured and made to give a statement under duress when he was taken into questioning on 4 March last year.
Advocate Fanie Harmse cross-examined investigating officer Captain Wesley Lombard about the night Appollis and his co-accused, Stefano van Rhyn, were taken in for questioning at the Sea Border police station.
Harmse presented his client’s evidence, saying Appollis had been taken into a boardroom, physically assaulted and threatened to give a statement or “he is going to die”.
“Accused one said he was indeed threatened and if he said anything to anybody about having been assaulted, he would suffer more punishment and torture, even death,” Harmse said in the Western Cape high court sitting in Saldanha Bay.
Lombard said this was not true, and no cases of assault were reported to him.
According to Harmse, police officers handcuffed Appollis and ordered him to sit on the floor and bring his knees towards his arms. They then pushed a rod in between his arms and legs and raised him off the floor.
Harmse said the officers placed a black plastic bag over Appollis’s head, and a man slapped him very hard. The plastic bag was held tight around his neck so he couldn’t breathe. This was done to the accused repeatedly, the lawyer said.
“Accused one said the officers kept forcing him to tell them what happened, and while the plastic bag was on his head, they were hitting him with batons on his hands, feet and head, and it was very sore and he couldn’t breathe,” Harmse added.
Lombard said he had not witnessed any of these actions against Appollis, but added that he was in and out of the building when the accused were kept in custody. He did however confirm that Appollis’s left eye was blue and swollen. But when Lombard asked Appollis at the time if he had been assaulted by the police, he said no.
The trial, which commenced on 3 March, was set to conclude on 28 March, but Judge Nathan Erasmus ruled that the admissibility of the two accused’s statements would need to be tested in a trial within a trial.
Joslin disappeared from her Saldanha Bay home on 19 February 2024, and the accused are her mother Kelly Smith and her boyfriend Appollis, as well as the pair’s friend, Van Rhyn.
All three have pleaded not guilty of kidnapping and trafficking, but former co-accused Lourentia Lombaard, who turned state witness, has testified that Smith and Appollis planned to sell Joslin to a sangoma for R20 000.
On Friday, Van Rhyn’s attorney Nobahle Mkabayi said her client had also been assaulted by the police officers on duty.
“I have perused the statement with a fine comb. On my perusal I’ve realised that the statement is not an unequivocal admission of guilt that is required by law… It’s not a confession,” she said.
“If I argue that it was an admission, I argue that it was only an admission of fact admitted under the following circumstances: My client was not the author of the admission, the admission was prescribed to him. That means he didn’t make those admissions freely and voluntarily. He was tortured and it cannot be said that he made them under sober senses or sound mind, and he was unduly influenced.”
Erasmus said the trial would continue on Tuesday, and warned the defence and state to prepare themselves for long days ahead.
