Lawyers representing former National Assembly member Geoffrey Mwilima and Namibia’s prison authorities have not been able to reach a settlement in the High Court case in which Mwilima is trying to be released from prison on medical grounds.
Mwilima’s legal representative, Profysen Muluti, and government lawyer Alice Makemba informed the High Court this week that settlement negotiations in Mwilima’s case against the prison authorities and the minister of home affairs, immigration, safety and security have been unsuccessful. As a result of that development, acting judge Kobus Miller on Wednesday postponed the hearing of the matter to 24 February.
Mwilima’s case was filed in the Windhoek High Court in June 2019.
He is asking the court to declare that the medical officer of Windhoek Correctional Facility has failed to consider and make a decision on a request by him to be recommended for release on medical grounds.
He is also asking the court to declare that the medical officer’s alleged failure to consider and decide on his request is “a dereliction of duty and wilful disregard of the law”.
In addition, he is asking the court to direct the medical officer to consider his request to be recommended for release due to his state of health, and to decide on that, and in the alternative he wants the court to direct the minister of safety and security to authorise his release on medical grounds.
The minister and the prison authorities are opposing Mwilima’s application.
Mwilima (65) has been in jail for more than 21 years, after being arrested in August 1999.
He has since December 2015 been serving an effective prison term of 18 years, which he received at the end of the marathon main Caprivi high-treason trial that followed an attempt to secede the former Caprivi region from Namibia.
Mwilima was convicted of high treason, nine counts of murder and 90 charges of attempted murder over his involvement in a separatist movement that aimed to secede the Zambezi region from Namibia.
A close relative of Mwilima, who requested anonymity, yesterday said he had to be treated in the intensive care unit of Lady Pohamba Private Hospital in Windhoek for close to a week near the end of December, after he had been diagnosed with Covid-19.
The relative said Mwilima has since been returned to Windhoek Correctional Facility and described his health as remaining “worrisome”.
Mwilima has informed the court in an affidavit he is suffering from kidney failure, which necessitates dialysis treatment twice a week, diabetes and high blood pressure.
He also stated that three doctors who have been treating him have recommended he should be released on medical grounds so he can receive better treatment outside prison.
The commissioner general of the Namibian Correctional Service, Raphael Hamunyela, said in an affidavit also filed at the court that the Correctional Service Act and regulations do not impose a duty on the prison’s medical officer to recommend that Mwilima be released on medical grounds, but only empower the medical officer to recommend the release of an offender on medical grounds.
The minister of safety and security can authorise the release of a prisoner on medical grounds only on a recommendation of the prison’s medical officer, but such a recommendation has not been made, Hamunyela said.
Former minister of safety and security Charles Namoloh took a similar stance in another affidavit filed with the High Court, stating that the minister could authorise Mwilima’s release only if the prison’s medical officer recommended that, which Namoloh said had not been done.