Cape Town - An Abu Dhabi prosecutor has given up his more than five-month search for the missing original records that are required by the judge to prosecute Cape Town professor Cyril Karabus – a development which could see Karabus finally being set free.
Karabus’s lawyer, Michael Bagraim, said yesterday that the prosecutor had indicated that he planned to ask the court to drop the three-year-sentence imposed on Karabus.
Karabus, 77, of Kenilworth, was tried and convicted in absentia in the United Arab Emirates in 2002, and sentenced to three years for falsifying documents and six months for manslaughter.
This was after he worked as a locum at the Sheikh Khalifa Medical Centre in Abu Dhabi in 2000.
Prosecutors argued that he failed to give a blood transfusion to a three-year-old Yemeni cancer patient during an operation. She later died of myeloid leukaemia.
His sentence also included paying about R230 000 “blood money” to the victim’s family.
A specialist paediatric oncologist, Karabus has been detained since August 18.
Bagraim said that if the court dropped the main charge of falsifying documents, the second charge of manslaughter for supposedly not giving a blood transfusion to the patient was also likely to be dropped.
“The prosecutor has informed our attorneys in Abu Dhabi that they have now given up on the search and that without the originals they can’t press ahead with the forgery charge,” he said.
Bagraim believes they have “overcome 90 percent of the hurdle” towards bringing Karabus home, as the first charge carried a heavy sentence.
Cape Argus