The State had at least 20 potential witnesses against alleged abortionist Jonathan Kinane, 27, the Pietermaritzburg Magistrate’s Court heard on Wednesday.
Kinane was applying for bail before Magistrate Amanda Bezuidenhout.
Testifying for the State in opposition to bail was investigating officer Samantha Kerr, who said that after raiding Kinane’s office in Fraser Lane upon his arrest on September 29, they found three A4 books with names and contact numbers of the women he had assisted in illegally terminating their pregnancies.
The name of the drug he administered to the women was pencilled in alongside their names.
“I have two witness statements already and potentially 20 other witnesses who I still have to contact,” Kerr said, adding that more charges would be added to the charge sheet once her investigations were complete.
Kinane, a Ugandan, allegedly runs an unregistered abortion clinic in the centre of Pietermaritzburg.
He is charged with terminating pregnancies while not registered as a doctor or nurse.
It is alleged that Kinane administered a drug to Nontsikelelo Mbanjwa on September 9, which led to the termination of her pregnancy at a facility that was not approved for abortion.
Mbanjwa is charged with concealment of birth, after she aborted a foetus five months into her pregnancy and then buried the foetus in the Lion Park, 13km from the city.
Kerr said she opposed Kinane’s bail on the basis that Kinane was identified in an ID parade and could intimidate witnesses.
“He is a threat to every woman out there who is in a desperate situation and has no other recourse but to abort her baby,” Kerr said.
She said Kinane was unemployed and had no fixed property or assets and was a flight risk as he was not a South African citizen.
Kerr also said she could not guarantee Kinane’s safety as the community was outraged by his alleged actions.
Demonstrators
The courtroom was packed with angry protesters who were demonstrating outside the court building earlier, carrying placards labelling Kinane a murderer and calling for him to remain behind bars.
Kerr said the remains of Mbanjwa’s foetus had been recovered and a post-mortem would be conducted as well as toxicology report.
She said that while no actual tablets were found on Kinane’s premises, an “empty seal” of tablets was found in his office and this would be sent for analysis.
“I have been investigating crimes of this nature for years, and I know that this was the tablet used to abort babies,” Kerr said. Kerr added that at her police station alone, which was in central Pietermaritzburg, 18 cases of concealment of births had been reported in the past two years, in which foetuses had been found dumped in the city.
Kerr said that pamphlets advertising “safe abortions” were found in the raid on Kinane’s offices.
“His offices were dark and dirty and contained numerous bottles of stuff that I have never seen before,” she said.
Kerr said she was still investigating who the offices belonged to, and where Kinane obtained the abortion drug that he was administering.
One of the State witnesses, Kerr said, gave birth to her baby after having taken medication given to her by Kinane to abort the foetus.
The baby was born with “complications”, Kerr said.
Other witnesses are said to have flushed their foetuses down the toilet on the instructions of Kinane.
Under cross-examination Kerr said she could not say for sure that the empty seal of tablets found in Kinane’s office was of the abortion drug.
She also conceded that the raid on Kinane’s offices was done without a search warrant.
But she denied the raid was unconstitutional, saying that she had had no time to apply for a search warrant, for fear that Kinane would dispose of the evidence before the raid.
The legal termination period for abortion is 12 weeks. Kerr confirmed all potential State witnesses were over four months pregnant when Kinane gave them the abortion drug.
The bail application was adjourned on Wednesday and will continue on November 9.