Scorpions challenge dismissed

2009-06-18 12:52

Cape Town - Businessman Hugh Glenister's latest bid to save the Scorpions has been rejected by a full bench of the Western Cape High Court.

In a ruling handed down on Thursday, Judge Siraj Desai said he would give reasons later, and that no costs order was being made.

Glenister had brought an urgent application to stop the transfer of the crime-busting unit to the SA Police Service, which was scheduled to happen at the beginning of June.

He maintained the move amounted to disbanding the unit in its present form. The respondents included the president, the ministers of justice and of safety and security, and the head of the National Prosecuting Authority.

Vexatious

However, the State legal team argued when the application was heard earlier this month that Glenister's campaign bordered on vexatious (legal action which is brought, regardless of its merits, solely to harass or subdue an adversary).

Last year he lost a bid to have the two bills scrapping the Scorpions declared constitutionally invalid before they were made law.

The Constitutional Court said then that it was premature to challenge the bills before they had been dealt with by Parliament and the executive.

In November Glenister wrote to then-president Kgalema Motlanthe urging him to submit the legislation for scrutiny by the Constitutional Court before he signed it into law.

Motlanthe rejected the request, and signed the bills in January.

Glenister's attorney Kevin Louis said after Thursday's ruling that his legal team would need to see the reasons before making any decision on an appeal.

"We will request those reasons as a matter of urgency and take it from there," he said.

- SAPA