Pretoria - Convicted child rapist Nicholas Ninow has scored a first round victory as the Supreme Court of Appeal has indicated it would hear his appeal against his rape conviction and life imprisonment sentence.
Ninow was jailed for the rape of a 7-year-old girl at Dros restaurant in Silverton.
The Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, last year turned Ninow’s application for leave to appeal down.
However, he directly petitioned the Supreme Court for leave to appeal, which has now been granted.
No papers have yet been lodged in this application, and it is not yet known when the appeal will be heard.
Legal Aid represented Ninow during his rape trial and it expected that the taxpayer will again foot the bill for his application.
Judge Papi Mosopa, who convicted and sentenced Ninow for the rape of the child last year, turned down his application for leave to appeal as he felt that no other court would come to a different conclusion.
From the start of lawyer Herman Alberts’s arguments last year, Judge Mosopa asked why the defence believed the court had erred in convicting Ninow in light of the accused’s own admissions. Ninow did not deny raping the child in the bathroom at the restaurant in September 2018.
The judge also questioned why the defence felt life imprisonment was inappropriate, given the severity of the crime. He said he had no choice in law but to sentence Ninow to life, as he could not find any mitigating factors to warrant a lesser sentence.
“I am not arguing that he must be excused, but another court may find mitigating circumstances and that long-term imprisonment is more appropriate than life imprisonment,” Alberts said at the time.
The argument hinges on whether or not Ninow’s actions were premeditated. Alberts argued that the judge had misdirected himself in drawing the inference that because Ninow sat at a table close to the children’s play area in the restaurant, he was scouting for a victim. Ninow claimed from the start that his actions in the bathroom were not planned, but that he acted on the spur of the moment.
While Alberts said Ninow had remorse for what he had done and that this should be taken into account as a mitigating factor, the judge at the time frowned upon this.
While awaiting his day in the Supreme Court, Ninow will first have to deal with possibly having some of his privileges withdrawn by Correctional Services after a cellphone was found in his cell over the weekend. He was earlier transferred from the Kgosi Mampuru Correctional Centre in to the Baviaanspoort Correctional Centre’s maximum security division, where he is serving his sentence.
He is, according to the department, not attending any form of formal education in the prison.
Correctional Services spokesperson Singabakho Nxumalo confirmed a cellphone was found in Ninow’s cell. “Regrettably offender Nicholas Ninow was caught with a cellphone in his possession. Cellphones are among the items classified as contraband, and inmates know these gadgets are not permitted inside our correction facilities,” Nxumalo told the Pretoria News.
He said this was a disturbing development as the department was working towards having contraband free facilities.
According to Nxumalo, Ninow has been charged regarding the cellphone and he will be “reprimanded accordingly”.
This, he said, may involve withdrawing his privileges for a certain period, downgrading his status, as well as other punitive measures.
An investigation has been launched to establish how the cellphone was smuggled into the cell and to identify other role-players who may have been involved. The phone will also be forensically examined.
Pretoria News