The case of the four Ugandan nationals who face different charges respectively, including human trafficking, kidnapping, rape, attempted murder, illegal abortion and being in the country illegally, continued in the Secunda Magistrate’s Court on June 26.
Magistrate Graham Cupido heard the prosecutor’s, advocate Tracy Keen-Horak, closing arguments. The four accused, Lydia Mojemba (37), Wilson Seyikabi (49), Jingo Wassua (38) and Njombozi Katiti (46), were arrested in July 2018 in Ogies after abducting Mojemba’s niece on July 13, 2018.
Mojemba’s 23-year-old niece, also a Ugandan national, was lured to SA to work for her aunt, who allegedly handed out pamphlets advertising abortion and traditional healer services.
Keen-Horak said in court that all four accused pleaded not guilty and told how they arrived at the niece’s house in Secunda, where she lived with her boyfriend, and forcefully took her.
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The niece was pregnant at the time, and the four kept her for a weekend, giving her abortion tablets to swallow and inserting them in other parts of her body.
Although the niece was sick and vomited and bled, her aunt refused to seek medical attention for her. When the niece finally gave birth to her stillborn baby girl the next day, one of the accused, Katiti, removed the baby, and the aunt, Mojemba, told him to get rid of it.
He threw it next to the train tracks in Ogies, where the police later found it after intervening. The niece managed to contact her boyfriend, fled to Secunda, and went to the police, who then accompanied her and her boyfriend to Ogies, where they arrested the four.
Keen-Horak said the victim’s evidence remained clear and consistent throughout the court case. The case was postponed to today (July 2) for the State’s last closing arguments.
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