Cape Town - Exactly what happened on the night Cape Town underworld boss Cyril Beeka was assassinated more than 11 years ago may never be known after the Constitutional Court ordered that the man who was with him in his dying moments be extradited.
The Constitutional Court yesterday also found that Serbian fugitive and suspected assassin Dobrosav Gavric was not fit for refugee status in South Africa.
Gavric had been Beeka’s driver in March 2011, when gunmen opened fire on the vehicle they were travelling in on Robert Sobukwe Road. Gavric was also suspected of shooting Beeka, whose murder is yet to be solved
Gavric, who was wounded in the shooting, has been fighting his extradition since his arrest in 2011.
He took the matter to the highest court of the land after his application for refugee status was refused in 2012. The Western Cape High Court had denied his application to review and set aside the decision by the Refugee Status Determination Officer. He also sought a court declaration that section 4 (1) (b) of the Refugees Act was unconstitutional. As an alternative, he sought to obtain a declaratory order prohibiting South African authorities from extraditing him, deporting him or compelling his return to Serbia.
Gavric has spent the past seven years in prison, after his true identity was discovered following the hit on Beeka.
Gavric had been living in South Africa and working with Beeka under the name Sasa Kovacevic. Gavric fled Serbia in 2007, entering South Africa illegally following the assassination of eljko Ranatovic, a military commander known as Arkan, who was aligned with the Miloevic government during the Yugoslav conflict in the 1990s. The Serbian government believed Gavric was responsible for the killing and that country’s courts in 2008 sentenced him to 30 years’ imprisonment in his absence.
Despite attempts by Serbia to extradite Gavric, he managed to stall the process by applying for refugee protection in January 2012 on the grounds that he had been incorrectly identified as a member of a political group that orchestrated Arkan’s assassination and had fled the country in fear of his life.
The Refugee Status Determination Officer initially refused Gavric’s application, using a section from the Refugees Act that ordered he was ineligible for such refugee status because he had committed a serious, non-political crime.
In the intervening years, Gavric has insisted that this was the wrong decision, leading to a series of court battles and even suggestions that the Refugees Act be altered.
Yesterday, the Constitutional Court found Gavric was not entitled to refugee status due to having likely committed a non-political crime and that his arguments were contradictory.
Gavric had argued that not only had he not committed any crime - claiming he was not involved in Arkan’s murder - but also that if he had committed the crime, it had been politically motivated.
“If the applicant maintains his innocence, he can have no knowledge of the motive behind the crime. His contentions regarding the motive for the crime are not direct evidence but rather speculation,” read the majority ruling.
The court acknowledged that the Serbian courts had already dealt with four appeals on the murder case, with four separate entities agreeing that Arkan’s killing had not been politically motivated and likely had been committed for monetary gain.
“All that is before us is speculation and conjecture as to the motives behind the crime. Consequently, while there is credible evidence to support a reasonable belief that the applicant has committed a serious crime (murder), there is no basis upon which this court can find that this crime was politically motivated,” the Constitutional Court ruled.
Because of this, Gavric was excluded from refugee status.
It will now be up to him and his legal team to argue his extradition case. It’s likely his main argument will be he believes his life is in danger should he return to Serbia.