Man demands P5 million for unlawful jail time
Ex-convict drags government to court
Koketso Diaparo (38) of Mmankgodi is relentless in demanding that government pays him P5 million for unlawfully imprisoning him for a period of five years.
Even after court dismissed his P5 million demand application in June this year, Diaparo decided to appeal the matter last week, believing firmly that the state needs to pay and pay big.
Diaparo was sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbery in 2008 and was supposed to be released in 2018. However, the court reduced his term by three years four months, so that his earliest release date was to be February 2015.
That February of 2015, he was not released, with the state arguing that Diaparo had escaped from custody in January 2009. When he was re-captured, they made him stay for the years he spent outside so that his new release date was 2021.
Aggrieved, Diaparo sought the intervention of the court in 2017 and an order was made by Francistown Judge Barnabas Nyamazabo that Diaparo be released from custody with immediate effect on December 2019.
After being released, he then went to court again, demanding that government pay him P5 million for all the days he spent in jail beyond February 2015.
In June this year, Lobatse High Court Judge, Reuben Lekorwe dismissed Diaparo’s P5 million demand application saying based on the evidence presented to him, he is convinced that there existed legal bases for detaining him in prison beyond February 2015.
“I have never denied nor agreed to the issue of me escaping from prison, all I am saying is that there was no case of escaping from lawful custody against me. The law says if someone commits a crime, they should be taken to court but that was never the case with me,” Diaparo argued this week.
He hopes the Court of Appeal (COA) will hear his case early next year.
“The Judge misguided himself in his judgement and I will fight to the bitter end. He cannot agree with Prisons officers that when someone escapes from prison they recapture them and not take them to court.
“Escaping from prison is an offence under the penal code. Court had to determine the appropriate punishment, not them,” he said.
When giving evidence in court before Judge Lekorwe’s ruling, Lesego Lekgoanyana said that in his capacity as BPS officer stationed at Prisons headquarters in Gaborone in the Operations and Security Unit, he was told on the 3rd January 2015 that Koketso was spotted around Ramatlabama border post.
He went there to re-capture him personally and the convict was taken to the first offenders’ prison in Gaborone before being taken to Mahalapye prison where he had escaped.
Lesedi Moatswi who was Officer in Charge at Mahalapye Prison in 2015 said Diaparo was handed to him on the 4th January
2015 and on arrival, he interviewed him and advised him to be a lawabiding prisoner if he wished to complete his term.
He informed Diaparo that they had spent five years 11 months and five days looking for him. The state considered Diaparo a free man during that period. This meant that his sentence would be increased by the same period he spent outside as per the Prisons Act.