A group of villagers in Thaba-Tseka has asked the High Court for more time to prepare their lawsuit against the police. The 46 villagers, who are all from Liseleng, want the Tšifa-li-Mali High Court to extend the prescription time so they can sue the police for unlawful arrest, torture, detention, and malicious prosecution which they say they suffered in May 2022.
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They claim the police assaulted them as they were picketing at the Lesotho Highlands Development Authority (LHDA)’s offices in Thaba-Tseka to demand better compensation for their private and communal land appropriated during the construction of dams.
Under the law, they should have sued the police for damages within six months. This means their case should have been filed around October or November 2022.
In an application filed last week, the group pleads with the court to give them up to December this year to file their case.
Realeboha Sekonyela, one of the villagers, tells the court in an affidavit that their delay to sue was not out of negligence.
Sekonyela says they worried that the hearing dates for their lawsuit might clash with those of their criminal trial in Thaba-Tseka. They were charged for their involvement in the protest.
“We had reasonable belief and fear that if we lodged the civil proceedings against (the police), we then ran the risk of clashing dates on which we have to appear for a criminal trial in Thaba-Tseka while at the same time civil proceedings would continue at this High Court in Leribe,” Sekonyela said.
He said they faced a “paradox of lodging our claim against the (police) while the criminal case against us (at) the Thaba-Tseka Magistrate’s Court was not finalised for fear that we would be imprisoned for breach of bail applications in cases where our remand dates would coincide with the days for our civil case”.
Sekonyela told the court that their fear was real because the police were “so vengeful against us upon any failure to attend remands”
“They caused warrants of arrest to be issued against us for failure to attend remands notwithstanding that this was a joint arrangement between our counsel and the previous prosecutor”.
He said another reason for the delay was the lack of funds to hire a lawyer to file their case.
“We did not have any money to pay for transport to prosecute our civil claim in the Leribe High Court while at the same time paying for heavy transport costs to attend criminal proceedings in Thaba-Tseka.”
“As if that was not enough, the (police) deliberately subjected us to many unreasonable postponements which caused a serious delay to finalisation of those criminal proceedings in the magistrate court for a whooping period of about two years where in one occasion they offered an excuse that they did not have any prosecutor for our case.”
About the May 2022 incident, Sekonyela told the court that the police assaulted, humiliated and tortured them for merely picketing outside the LHDA’s offices.
He said women and the elderly were forced to roll down the slopes of a mountain.
The villagers, he said, were also dunked in the Matsoku River, beaten with fighting sticks, and insulted. Among them was a 75-year-old man.
Staff Reporter
