Bible in dock with rape suspect
2006-06-14 08:20
Johannesburg - South Africa's top detective superintendent Piet Byleveld first injected him with HIV and then himself took a blood sample from him, testified Sipho Dube, 27, in his own defence on Tuesday in the Johannesburg High Court.
He is standing trial for the murder of Tina Bernardes, 11, and six other children.
Dube is also being tried on 17 charges of abduction, four of rape and six of indecent assault. He argued that all the children involved in the charges against him had been paid to lay the charges.
The respective doctors who examined the children after the incidents had also been paid to testify against him and the police had made up all his statements and concocted the evidence against him.
Byleveld had led the investigation into this case.
Dube was linked by DNA to more than one of the incidents, but he maintained that a doctor had not taken a blood sample from him for DNA tests, even though the doctor testified for the State that a sample had indeed been taken.
Dube said Byleveld was the only person who drew blood from him - at his (Byleveld's) farm in Pretoria where Dube claimed he was also given electric shocks and tortured in other ways.
But first a liquid that looked like ''water'' but that Dube thought could have been the HI virus, was injected into him.
Dube sat the whole time with his head hanging down and his Bible next to him in the dock. He seldom looked up, but at one stage became so upset when the prosecutor, advocate Joanie Spies, wanted him to look at photos of the scenes where three of the children were murdered, that he grabbed his Bible and said loudly his faith forbade him to look at corpses.
He refused to look at the photos.