By Barry Bateman
A week after three inmates were told they were eligible for parole, five former death row inmates now serving life sentences had their applications turned down in Pretoria's Palace of Justice.
Yesterday Judge Eberhard Bertelsmann cited the full bench judgment in an application by the killer of Communist Party leader Chris Hani, Clive Derby-Lewis, when he dismissed the applications by Paul van Vuren, Carel Meiring, Pieter van der Merwe, Rudolph Strydom and G J R Botha.
The five questioned the constitutionality of section 136 of the Correctional Services Act.
In court papers they claimed that a sub-section in the act prescribed a mandatory non-parole period of 20 years, which arbitrarily deprived some people (prisoners) of their right to freedom without just cause, in violation of the Bill of Rights.
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They claimed it denied some prisoners the right to benefit from the least severe prescribed punishment.
Bertelsmann found that the act was in line with the constitution and the men were not eligible for parole because they had not yet served 20 years of their life sentences.
This was consistent with the full bench judgment in the case of Derby-Lewis.
Last week Bertelsmann found that Johannes van Vuuren, Sagarias van Gruning and Willem Bosman were eligible for parole because they had served more than 20 years of their life sentences.
Van Vuren said he would appeal the judgment.
Proceedings at the Palace of Justice and Pretoria High Court got off to a late started because of a power failure in the CBD.
Judgment in the parole case was supposed to start at 10am, but only got going about 12.30pm, shortly after power was restored.
Tshwane Metro Council spokeswoman Antoinette Mostert said the failure was due to a fault at the Boom Street substation.
It was unclear what had caused the substation to trip.
- This article was originally published on page 4 of Pretoria News on July 04, 2009
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