Justicia Shipena
The High Court has dismissed a N$700 000 damages lawsuit by Norman Kavara, an inmate at the Hardap Correctional Facility, who claimed correctional officers humiliated him during a strip-search in August 2021.
The judgement delivered on Thursday found that Kavara did not prove that officers unlawfully stripped him, handcuffed him or forced him to perform degrading frog jumps while naked.
Kavara is serving a twelve-and-a-half-year sentence for murder.
He sued the minister of home affairs, safety and security, the head of the Namibia Correctional Service (NSC), Raphael Hamunyela and three senior officials from Hardap.
He claimed they violated his dignity by stripping him in a corridor between cells seven and eight where inmates and female officers could see him.
He said the officers put him in handcuffs, removed his clothes, and made him do ten jump squats while about twenty officers laughed at him.
He also said inmates in the nearby cells could observe him through elevated windows.
The defendants denied this. They agreed that a strip search took place, but they said it was lawful, private, and without humiliation.
They said Kavara removed his clothes after the head of discipline explained the rules to him.
They said he was only asked to do three squats to check whether he had hidden contraband in his rectum.
High Court judge Gerson Narib said the court had to deal with two conflicting versions. Kavara and three inmate witnesses supported his account.
Three correctional officials said the search was respectful and followed proper procedures.
Narib found Kavara’s version unlikely. He pointed to contradictions in his evidence, including inconsistent statements about whether he was handcuffed in front or behind and whether inmates were already back in their cells at the time.
Narib said it made no sense that officers would wait until after the courtyard search to humiliate Kavara in the corridor when they could have done so in the courtyard if that had been their intention.
He said the corridor was chosen because it provided privacy for strip searches. He also noted that the search was planned as a major operation involving close to twenty officers.
Narib further said the defendants’ version was more plausible and could not be rejected. He found that Kavara was not handcuffed, not forced to do frog jumps and not stripped in the presence of female officers or other inmates.
He said Kavara removed his clothes after the officers explained the procedure and the law to him.
“I cannot find the plaintiff’s version to be true and acceptable, and I can also not reject the defendant’s version as false or mistaken.”
