Krejcir wants to go to ‘Sun City’
RADOVAN Krejcir wants out of Kokstad C-Max.
The notorious Czech fugitive – who is currently being held at the high security prison in southern KwaZulu-Natal – has taken his fight for a cell closer to home to the courts.
Krejcir brought an application against Minister of Correctional Services Michael Masutha before Judge Nkosinathi Chilli in the high court in Pietermaritzburg yesterday.
Correctional Services spokesperson Logan Maistry told The Mercury that Krejcir wanted a transfer to Johannesburg Prison, also known as “Sun City”.
He wanted to be held there until the matters against him, which were still before the courts, were finalised.
Krejcir claimed that his right to a fair trial was being impeded and he was denied visits by his family as well as the medical care he needed.
“The department is opposing all the relief sought,” Maistry said.
The case was postponed indefinitely for the department to file its opposing papers. Krejcir is serving a 35-year sentence for attempted murder, kidnapping and drug dealing.
He was found guilty of kidnapping and torturing Bheki Lukhele after his brother, Doctor, “disappeared” with a consignment of the street drug, tik.
He also faces a raft of charges related to a number of attempts to escape police custody, which he allegedly made during his trial.
An application to extradite him to his home country is presently under way.
At the beginning of the year, a Kempton Park magistrate ordered that Krejcir’s then highly strict, prison conditions be relaxed.
Before that, he was being kept in isolation and prevented from having access to his legal team or relatives.
The magistrate granted him access to his lawyers and permission to use the public phones in prison.
But subsequent to that, Eyewitness News has reported on Krejcir’s family’s claims that he was still being subjected to “inhumane conditions and psychological torture”, and deprived of medical care.
However, according to the news outlet, prison authorities denied this.