SA killer's execution sparks row

2003-07-23 08:37

Gaborone - A South African criminal mastermind has been executed for murder in Botswana, sparking fresh controversy about the death penalty in the southern African country.

Lehlohonolo Kobedi was hanged on Friday in the Botswana capital of Gaborone, and buried in the cemetery of the central prison, according to the Mmegi Monitor newspaper.

Kobedi, wanted in neighbouring South Africa for allegedly masterminding robberies, was found guilty by a Botswana court in 1998 of killing a police officer in a shoot-out after a botched robbery in northern Botswana.

But, a local rights group hit out on Tuesday at what it called the "secretive and arbitrary conduct by the government of Botswana in administering the death penalty", calling for urgent reform to the legal system.

Under the Botswana system, a lawyer is assigned to a defendant free of charge, but the Ditschwanelo rights group argues the system works against the interests of defendants.

11th-hour appeal succeeded

The rights group said: "Kobedi was represented in his original hearing by a ... lawyer who was unfamiliar with trying death-penalty cases, who failed to raise important legal and factual issues on his behalf."

Ditschwanelo made the headlines in 1999 by launching a dramatic 11th-hour appeal on behalf of two Bushmen sentenced to death for the murder of a farmer.

Gwara Brown Motswetla and Phetolo Maauwe were granted a retrial six hours before they were due to have been hanged.

The rights group argued that the defendants spoke the Secherechere dialect, and did not understand the language used to conduct their trial, and that they had been misrepresented by their lawyer.

Kobedi is the second South African to be hanged in Botswana in just more than two years. The latest hanging brings the number of executions since Botswana's independence in 1966 to 35.

- AFX