Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
Hands of alleged killer shake Siam’s mother
THE sight of Siam Lee’s alleged killer’s hands in front of her shook Siam’s mother as she sat behind him when he appeared before a Durban magistrate yesterday. “Those hands ( allegedly) hurt my daughter,” Carmen Lee said in an exclusive interview with Independent Media after the accused’s brief appearance.
Carmen sat in the front row of the gallery accompanied by friends. “My biggest pain is thinking what she must have felt. The fear. My baby. My sweet girl. The mental anguish of absolute fear is the most painful to comprehend.”
Her daughter’s body was found, burnt, in a sugar cane field on a farm near New Hanover in the middle of last month after she was last seen at a house in upmarket Durban North which operated as a brothel.
Private investigator Brad Nathanson, who apprehended the well- spoken 29- year- old man who stood in the dock, strongly rejected rumours that Siam may not be dead and that the body could be that of someone else.
“That story is cruel,” he said. “One doesn’t want to give people hope when there is no hope.”
The body has been identified as Siam’s by a family member, but is still in the possession of police pending the results of DNA testing.
Carmen has accepted that her daughter is dead. “But I still feel her presence. Every morning.”
As the accused went back down into the cells after magistrate Mohammed Motala remanded him to February 9, Carmen’s lips could been seen moving as she said a prayer.
After the hearing, Carmen escaped the press and later stood at a doorway in a corridor to greet and embrace those who came to support her.
During the hearing, the accused spoke of how his family had been insulted and harassed on their visits to him in the cells at Durban North police station. “I have suffered immense torture,” he added, claiming he had scars all over his body. “They suffocated me with plastic, punched me and held guns at me. I’ve suffered enough and I would like to move to Westville (prison) so I can at least sleep a little better.”
Outside court, Sue Foster scoffed at his request: “How can an alleged killer stand in court and say he hopes for a mattress and yet he is the same man who allegedly killed Siam?”
The accused also said he believed his case was being sabotaged. He claimed he was ordered to change from the clothes he was wearing when he was arrested because they had been torn after he was dragged around.
“They made me change to hide the damage.”
He had also been told to “either confess to something I don’t know or end up in a body bag”.
The court heard it was often difficult to access detainees at Westville during investigations, prompting the magistrate to rule that “the State authorities must act within the ambit of the law and respect your constitutional rights”.
The court further ordered that the accused see a district surgeon as soon as possible. Magistrate Motala further said that the accused could face a charge of rape.