Publication: Sapa Issued: Bloemfontein Date: 2007-11-06 Reporter:

Judgment in Zuma Appeal Hearing Expected This Week

 

Publication 

Sapa
BC-COURT-APPEAL-ZUMA

Issued

 Bloemfontein
Date

2007-11-06

 

The Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) is scheduled to deliver judgment on Thursday on an appeal against search and seizure raids on the offices of former deputy president Jacob Zuma and his lawyers being declared invalid.

Spokesman for the SCA, Henry Snyman, said on Tuesday that judgment would be handed down in four appeals involving Zuma, his lawyers and French arms company Thint.

The National Prosecuting Authority and four of its sub-directorates appealed to the SCA in August against a Durban High Court judgment in favour of Zuma and his attorney Michael Hulley.

The search and seizure warrants were executed in August 2005 at properties belonging to Zuma in Gauteng and KwaZulu-Natal and at Hulley's Durban office. The high court declared the five search warrants invalid and the searches pursuant to them unlawful.

It ordered the NPA to return all the evidence seized under them to Zuma and Hulley.

Judgement was also expected on the appeal against the Johannesburg High Court decision which declared a search and seizure warrant served on Julie Mahomed as unlawful.

Mahomed was Zuma's attorney from time to time, and was the author of a loan agreement which came under scrutiny during the trial of Zuma's former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik.

The SCA was also expected to deliver judgment in Zuma's and Thint's appeal against an application by the National Director of Public Prosecutions to get original documents from Mauritius related to investigations against them.

With acknowledgement to Sapa.


Thursday's high noon at the corral, okay?

If the rulings go in favour of The People represented by The State, we expect arrests by the normal close of business Central African Time that day - no fear, no favours - net staaldak, webbing en geweer.

Then this can signal the beginning of the end of this ridiculously stretched-out blot on our national jurisprudential landscape *1.


*1      No fault of or slight to the investigating and prosecuting teams.