Trial on Serial Rape Charges Postponed

Werner Menges

30 June 2011

THE trial of the man accused of carrying out a series of sex attacks near Windhoek’s two State hospitals in 2008 and 2009 is scheduled to continue only in late November, after the prosecutor in the case fell ill this week.

Engelbert Oxurub pleaded not guilty to ten charges – including four counts of rape and four counts of attempted murder – when his trial started in the High Court in Windhoek on Monday.

The prosecution’s fifth witness in the trial – a teenage girl who is alleged to have been Oxurub’s first victim – was testifying before Judge Collins Parker on Monday afternoon when Deputy Prosecutor General Jackson Kuutondokwa fainted in court.

Kuutondokwa has been booked off ill, with the result that the trial was postponed to November 28 yesterday.

Oxurub (44) is accused of attacking three teenage girls and two adult women in the vicinity of Windhoek Central Hospital and Katutura State Hospital over a ten-month period between June 2008 and April 2009.

Four of the alleged victims were strangled or throttled when they were attacked, while the three girls and one of the women were allegedly raped during the attacks.

Oxurub was arrested after the last attack on April 7 2009, in which a young nurse, Selma Sheetekela, had been throttled by a man who attacked her from behind while she was walking on her way to Windhoek Central Hospital.

The attack was cut short and the attacker fled when Sheetekela’s screams for help got a reaction from security guards stationed at the psychiatric hospital near Windhoek Central Hospital.

Sheetekela told Judge Parker on Monday that Oxurub was the man who had attacked her.

The other attacks that Oxurub has denied being responsible for took place on

-June 30 2008, when a 13-year-old girl was allegedly raped near Windhoek Central Hospital;

-March 3 2009, when a 16-year-old girl was allegedly raped near the psychiatric hospital;

-March 30 2009, when another 16-year-old girl was allegedly raped near Windhoek Central Hospital; and

-April 1 2009, when an adult woman was allegedly raped near Katutura Hospital.

The woman targeted in the attack on April 1 2009 also claimed on the witness stand on Monday that Oxurub was the person who attacked her.

Oxurub will remain in custody until the scheduled continuation of his trial. He is represented by lawyer Jerhome Tjizo.

AllAfrica – All the Time