Mathe guilty on 64 charges

2009-06-03 15:56

Johannesburg - C-Max escapee Annanias Mathe is a hardened criminal whose behaviour was "vicious and abnormal", said a judge in the High Court in Johannesburg on Wednesday.

Judge Geraldine Borchers made the statements minutes after convicting Mathe on 64 of the 71 charges he faced which included rape, indecent assault, attempted murder, aggravated robbery and housebreaking.

"The accused before me strikes me as a hardened criminal. His behaviour has been vicious... largely abnormal," Borchers said.

She said it was prudent for the State to postpone the matter till Wednesday next week to allow the defence time to decide if a psychologist's report could be obtained in mitigation of sentencing.

This after Mathe's lawyer, Advocate Liz Serrao, requested a week's postponement to establish if she could bring a psychologist's report.

Serrao said she was awaiting instructions from the Legal Aid board in this regard.

Possessing firearms

"I'm interested in knowing if we have some psychological abnormality," Borchers said on granting the postponement.

Among charges Borchers convicted the Mozambican national on were one relating to the 2006 escape from Pretoria's C-Max high security prison, as well as an attempt to do so two years later.

Mathe, who sat stone-faced in court, focusing his attention on the judge, had pleaded guilty to these two charges.

He was also found guilty on charges of aggravated robbery, as well as three counts of unlawfully possessing firearms and three others of unlawfully possessing ammunition.

Not guilty verdicts were pronounced on two of the seven rape charges, three indecent assaults and two charges of corruption.

Clad in a wrinkled off-white shirt, Mathe cast his face down as heavily armed police officers led him to the holding cells, trying to evade the glaring television and newspaper cameras surrounding him.

- SAPA