POLICEMAN FOUND INNOCENT AFTER YEARS IN PRISON AWAITING TRIAL (IN SOUTH AFRICA)

And he was held on the flimsiest of evidence

His faith in God enabled a former policeman to get through four nightmare years in Pollsmoor Prison, where he was awaiting trial on a litany of trumped-up charges including rape, attempted murder, corruption and theft. Now David Neil Baard has launched a R5-million case against the police and prosecution authorities for malicious prosecution. Baard, who police investigated but never charged for involvement in the 1998 St Elmo's restaurant bombing in Camps Bay, endured multiple threats of sodomy and nearly had his throat slit twice during the years he spent in Pollsmoor. He also lost both his fiancée Cynthia Erasmus and father Edward to heart attacks while in jail. He also had to "beg" to attend his father's funeral, after he was denied permission to be present at his betrothed's burial.

Baard (39) was eventually acquitted of every charge against him in March last year. Magistrate Gaynor de Wee said she found it "extremely strange" that he had ever been prosecuted. The cases against him collapsed after the woman he was said to have raped proved an unreliable witness, the results of DNA tests were never submitted in court, a leading witness against him later admitted he had been lying, recordings of alleged confessions were never produced by the State and the policeman who was supposed to have made the recordings didn't remember doing so.

A police informant and self-confessed drug addict, Deon Mostert, was arrested hiding out in Lakeside for involvement in the St Elmo's and Blah Bar bombings but was never charged. Mostert implicated Baard in the St Elmo's bombing, but Mostert later admitted this was a lie. Court records reveal that Mostert had been one of the State's main witnesses in the rape, attempted murder and corruption case against Baard.

Evidence before magistrate De Wee showed that the "mentally challenged" woman who claimed Baard had raped her had also made rape allegations against four other men, including her own high-ranking police officer father and brother, during the same period. She had also been found to be an unreliable and immature witness in another rape case, which she brought against one of Baard's colleagues before Baard's trial. Baard's colleague was acquitted.

Strangely, DNA tests revealing that Baard had not had sex with the woman were never placed before the court. No medical evidence was presented to show that she had been raped. The State alleged that Baard had later tried to arrange the murder of the woman by asking another policeman and Mostert to inject rat poison into her heart in exchange for an illegal firearm. Mostert also claimed that Baard told him, during a meeting at the Golden Dragon Restaurant in Sea Point, that he wanted to kill the policeman who was investigating the rape case against him. But tapes of the alleged meeting, on which the attempted murder charges were based, were never produced by the State. The policeman who Mostert claimed was responsible for recording the conversation testified that he could remember nothing about them - a claim that De Wee said she found "odd".

Mostert said he met Baard while Baard was awaiting trial for the September 1998 rape charge. As part of an undercover operation in August 1999, Mostert claimed he had contacted Baard to organise a firearm for him through gangster contacts. But the weapons were later shown to be legally licensed and the State was unable to produce any evidence that Baard had sold an illegal weapon to Mostert.

Supported by his new fiancée, Desiree Afrika, Baard said he believed pressure on police to find those responsible for the urban terror attacks of the 1990s had played a part in the investigation against him. "I often asked God why this happened to me." A deeply religious man, Baard said he had only been able to survive his time in jail because of his faith in God, but was devastated that his father had not lived to see him vindicated.


From here



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