Omotoso ruling next week
Nigerian pastor’s legal team tells high court magistrate’s previous bail decision flawed
JUDGMENT in the latest bail application of Nigerian pastor Timothy Omotoso will be delivered next Thursday as his newly appointed legal team insisted the magistrate made errors when denying him bail the first time.
Omotoso’s new legal team, headed by Advocate Alwyn Rossouw SC, said in the Port Elizabeth High Court yesterday that the state’s first witness, investigating officer Detective Warrant Officer Peter Plaatjies, had been unreliable and not a credible witness.
“The state’s biggest mistake was to call Plaatjies,” Rossouw said.
His first bail application was denied after magistrate Thandeka Mashiyi found Omotoso to be a flight risk, had no fixed address, that he was an illegal immigrant and that should he be released on bail there was a strong possibility that he would intimidate or interfere with state witnesses.
But Rossouw refuted the claims made by the state and said Mashiyi had erred in her judgment on the grounds to deny bail.
“The magistrate made an error, her judgment was wrong and the applicant [Omotoso] should be released on bail,” Rossouw told Judge Glen Goosen.
Earlier in the day, Goosen questioned Rossouw on the validity of the bail appeal application and whether the matter related to Omotoso’s first bail application or renewal based on new facts.
Rossouw told the court the application was an appeal on the first judgment as it would be more convenient to deal with the merits of that judgment before considering the second one.
“If both applications were before court then the first issue would be if the new facts [in the renewal of bail application] were in fact new.
“If not that we would go back to the first application,” Rossouw said.
Omotoso was arrested at the Port Elizabeth Airport on April 20.
He is facing 22 charges related to the contravention of the Sexual Offences Act, two of them for rape.
Omotoso has denied the allegations and was not in court yesterday.
It is alleged that the complainants, some as young as 13, were taken to Omotoso’s Jesus Dominion International mission house in Durban by henchwomen who coerced the girls into performing sexual acts on him.
State prosecutor Advocate Nceba Ntelwa said Mashiyi’s judgment was correct and there were no extraordinary circumstances warranting Omotoso’s release on bail.
“[The magistrate] correctly concluded that the applicant’s release [on bail] was not in the interests of justice,” he said.
Ntelwa cited various reasons for this, including that Omotoso was regarded as an illegal immigrant with nothing linking him to the country and that he knew the identity of the victims and would intimidate them. Meanwhile two women arrested on Tuesday for allegedly recruiting girls from across the country and monitoring their movements in the houses where they were kept will appear in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court today on charges including human trafficking.
The applicant’s release was not in the interests of justice