SAPS 'accepts full responsibility for maltreatment of elderly widow Floris Engelbrecht in false-arrest case' - Pretoria High Court documents:
Mrs Floris Engelbrecht has lodged as R1million claim in the Pretoria High Court against the SA Minister of Police for the abuse at the hands of SAPS-members on 6 november 2008.The brief Beeld newspaper report describes the maltreatment - but somehow avoids to mention the identities of the (black) police officers who abused the elderly Afrikaner woman on the night of her arrest.
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(*These facts are however freely available in the public court documents and under the law can be published. It's not clear why Beeld chose to keep the names of the black police officers who abused her, from the report.)
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The elderly, deeply religious Mrs Engelbrecht suffers with hip-problems and is frail, yet she was very roughly handled, threatened to be killed, bashed over the back of her head and beaten by the unnamed police officers who threw her into a cell overnight, writes Beeld on 13 August 2013
According to the documents before the court, the SAPS indicates that they 'accept full responsibility' for the 'incident'.
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With Mrs Engelbrecht having won the case, the court then postponed the hearing to an unknown date to establish the exact amount of compensation the police will have to pay to Mrs Engelbrecht
The widowed Mrs Engelbrecht's ordeal started in the early-morning hours of 6 November 2008. She had shouted out to someone outside her window because she was awakened by "a very loud noise" outside the apartment. She yelled at them to 'keep quiet'. Shortly thereafter someone (again, no physical description was published by Beeld, even though it's in the court record) came and kicked at her front door. She opened the door but remained locked in behind the sturdy security gates. The 'someone' then tried to hit her with his fist through the security gate and she sprayed 'the person' with pepper spray.
Shortly thereafter the SAPS from Sunnyside Pretoria showed up. She was arrested - she was not even given the opportunity to change out of her night-clothes. The elderly woman was 'very roughly manhandled' into the police van by the unidentified police personnel.
(Beeld didn't say if a woman-police officer was present during her arrest - as there should have been by law.)
She was dumped into the van 'very roughly' and taken to the police station and kept in a cell overnight. The police claimed to her that she was 'arrested for common assault' as there had been 'a complaint'.
The next day she was released and forced to walk five blocks with her damaged hip to her apartment.
The documents show that the court dismissed the case - in fact they threw the case out of court altogether and refused to prosecute her.
The documents submitted to the Pretoria High court show the acts for which the SA Police Minister has now 'accepted full responsibility". She was 'beaten to the back of her head, and roughly shoved around.' She was 'intimidated and the police threatened to shoot her dead'. The unidentified police officers were accused of being 'extraordinarily aggressive and she feared for her life'.
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(Beeld did not publish this, but Mrs Engelbrecht, as a deeply religious woman, a member of a local protestant congregation, now suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after her experience, and it was deeply insulting for her to spend a night in a police cell.
This has left her with a permanent psychological trauma and deep-seated fear of the police in South Africa, the documents also show.)
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Beeld link: http://www.beeld.com/nuus/2013-08-13-bejaarde-eis-oor-hardhandige-arrestasie-aanhouding
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