By Hazel Friedman
Noupoort police in the Western Cape have called in the Child Protection Unit to assist with investigations into the death of a young drug addict at the Noupoort Christian Centre.
This follows the arrest on Wednesday of two male staff at the Karoo rehabilitation centre, as police investigate murder charges.
According to police, Logan Klingenberg, 16, of Pretoria, died on Tuesday at about 10am. He was apparently found hanging on a chain.
He had been handcuffed and chained to the bars of a punishment cage where he had been kept in solitary confinement.
Police discovered bruises around his wrists and neck.
Police said Logan was sent to Noupoort on May 5 for heroin addiction. Inspector Chantel Manuel said Logan had tried to run away on May 12. He was caught and sent to a punishment centre at Noupoort, called Midlandia.
On Tuesday, he apparently refused to do physical exercise whereafter he was allegedly locked in a cage and handcuffed to a grated door.
Logan's devastated father Richard said: "We are shocked because we were told this morning that our son had committed suicide. Then we heard that foul play was suspected."
Klingenberg said he was too distraught to comment further.
Noupoort has come under fire from professionals in the rehabilitation field for some time for using harsh methods.
The centre is run by a fundamentalist Christian group.
The centre is not licensed by the state, and as it is a "care centre" falls under no official scrutiny.
But on Wednesday night it emerged that a delegation sent by the department of social services had visited the centre last month to see wether it could be licensed.
No official report has yet been submitted, but according to one of the delegates, they were shocked by conditions and the treatment meted out to inmates.
They will be recommending that Noupoort not be licensed and that the detention centre be shut down immediately.
Noupoort spokesperson Jeffrey McCarthy said Klingenberg was "troublesome".
He thought the two employees who handcuffed him to the gate were not acting negligently and accused the police of unfairness in "arresting innocent people who were not even near the vicinity at the time of his death".
But three sources within Noupoort say Klingenberg was unable to work because of his heroin withdrawal symptoms. They say he was deprived of food as punishment.
A police official said he once asked Noupoort founder, Pastor Sophos Nissitosis, why inmates were handcuffed in cages in Midlandia for days at a time without food, and the pastor replied: "The Bible says that if you don't work, you don't deserve to eat."
Two men, aged 43 and 30, will appear in court soon.