Woman convicted of smuggling migrants
A CONGOLESE woman who helped refugees enter Namibia illegally was found guilty in the Windhoek High Court on three counts of smuggling migrants yesterday.
Judge Dinnah Usiku convicted Abigail Bashala (53) on three charges of migrant smuggling to obtain a financial benefit, which is an offense under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act and acquitted Bashala on three similar charges.
Bashala was charged with 15 counts of migrant smuggling to obtain a financial benefit, on which she denied guilt at the start of her trial in November 2019. Usiku discharged her on nine of the counts after the end of the state’s case in her trial.
In the counts that remained after the judge’s discharge ruling, the state alleged that Bashala smuggled three citizens of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) from Zambia into Namibia at the end of October 2013 and that she also smuggled three other DRC citizens from Zambia into Namibia in September and December 2017 and in April 2018.
Usiku recounted in her judgment that according to Bashala, she met the complainants in the six remaining charges in Zambia and assisted them with their journeys to Namibia.
The three migrants involved in the charges on which Bashala was acquitted told the court she helped them to travel to Namibia, but denied that she had asked them to pay her, Usiku noted.
One of the complainants in one of the counts on which Bashala was found guilty told the court she decided to leave the DRC after she had been raped and her husband had been killed in 2015. The witness also testified that she paid US$500 to Bashala, supposedly for her to complete forms that would have enabled the witness to travel to Canada and ask for asylum as a refugee in that country.
According to another witness in respect of one of the charges on which Bashala was convicted, she crossed into Namibia from Zambia over the Zambezi River and not through a border post.
After her arrival in Namibia, she reported to the Red Cross and was subsequently sent to the Osire Refugee Camp south-east of Otjiwarongo. From Osire, she contacted Bashala, who asked her for a payment of US$500 to complete documents that were supposed to facilitate her travelling on to Canada, the witness recounted.
She added that she paid Bashala US$300 when she met Bashala at Otjiwarongo.
Usiku found it had not been proven that Bashala received financial benefits for herself by helping the people who entered Namibia at the end of October 2013.
On the other three charges, though, the judge found that Bashala’s denials that she had benefited financially could not be true, with the result that she was convicted.
Bashala had been free on bail until the delivery of the verdict yesterday, and is now being held in custody. She has to return to court for a presentence hearing on 15 August.
Defence lawyers Kenneth Siambango and Kalundu Kamwi, instructed by the Directorate of Legal Aid, represented Bashala during the trial.
Deputy prosecutor general Filistas Shikerete-Vendura represented the state.
