Cape Town - The family, friends and supporters of anti-apartheid struggle activist Imam Abdullah Haron are still reeling from evidence that points to the Imam having been beaten to death during his last days in police custody.
Specialist forensic pathologist Professor Steve Naidoo testified that the extensive injuries seen all over Haron were caused by blunt force impacts probably caused by a series of assaults.
Using cardboard cut-outs as demonstration aids in court, Naidoo gave an independent forensic analysis of the injuries Imam Haron suffered while in detention.
He testified at the request of the family’s lawyers.
He said the Imam’s torturers must have “kicked and stomped him while he lay on the floor” during his last days alive.
“An assault of deliberate nature must be considered as the most probable cause (of the injuries), whether at one sitting or at several incidents at around the same time.”
Dismissing the stair fall theory Naidoo, who has 39 years’ experience in the analysis of trauma, death and injury reconstruction, said the distribution and locations of the wounds were “more in keeping with a deliberate or purposeful nature than of random occurrence.”
He said this abuse caused significant physiological trauma that led to the systemic health complications which eventually caused his death.
Naidoo testified that were it not for the unrelenting abuse endured by Haron during detention, he would not have died at the time he did.
Concurring with the state’s forensic pathologist Dr Tumi Molefe, Naidoo also took issue with the post mortem report written by pioneering forensic pathologist Theodor Schwär in 1969.
He said Schwär’s report was “substandard and inadequate”.
All the evidence submitted at the inquest so far shows Haron entered detention in good physical health.
The evidence include s a medical examination for an insurance policy at the end of 1967, in which a Dr Louis Sternberg found him to be in normal health.
Even the Security Branch police testified at the original inquest in 1970 that he was in good health when arrested.
Lawyer for the Haron family, Howard Varney, said that in their version of Haron’s death, the State pushed the narrative that Haron always looked well and never complained, “and when asked he said he was fine”.
Varney said this remained the dominant narrative even when it became apparent that the Security Branch police had taken Haron from his Maitland police station cell on September 17 and returned him a physically broken man on September 19.
Naidoo demonstrated a definite connection between Haron’s complaints of various ailments, including chest pains, headaches and rectum bleeding, to his interrogation during the first 10 days of July and his interrogation during September.
Judge Daniel Thulare said he got the impression that the medical practitioners who gave evidence at the 1970 inquest, and those who treated Haron during his detention were part of the problem.