Body removed without prisons’ officials knowledge
RYDER GABATHUSE
Staff Writer
7/16/2004 12:05:20 AM (GMT +2)
FRANCISTOWN: The body of a Tanzanian asylum seeker, who was shot dead in March by prison officers, has been removed from the Kagiso Funeral Parlour without the knowledge of senior prisons officials.
Speaking to Mmegi yesterday the prisons divisional commander (North), assistant commissioner, Obusitswe Ntsima said that her office only realised that the body of the deceased, Shabani Ramadhani - who had claimed to be from Burundi - had been removed from the funeral parlour at the end of last month.
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“The officer in charge of prisons has been regularly checking on the corpse at the morgue,” she explained. “We had gone for a routine check-up, only to be told by mortuary officials that the body had been transferred to Lyn’s Funeral Parlour in Gaborone, on instructions from officials of the UNHCR in Gaborone,” she explained.
“When a person dies in our custody, it is our duty to trace their relatives,” she said. She further added that her office became suspicious when they recently heard at the mortuary, that relatives of the deceased would be coming from Tanzania to identify the corpse. “It was news to us because nothing has been communicated to us at all. We made it clear to the mortuary that under no circumstances should they give the corpse away without our knowledge,” she stressed.
“It is a pity that the mortuary released the corpse despite our earlier instruction that it should not happen,” she further added.
“We have been hoping that someone will come and identify the corpse, now we learn that it is long gone,” she said, adding that she wondered why the mortuary officials could not communicate to her office after she gave them explicit instructions not to release the body. “We are concerned whether the corpse was collected by the right relatives,” she said. She explained that it was the first time the UNHCR has dealt with them in this manner. “We have had cases in the past, where an asylum seeker had died in our custody, but these matters have always been settled amicably,” she said.
The under secretary for political affairs in the Office of the President, Ross Sanoto said yesterday, that he was not aware of the communication breakdown between Ntsima’s office and the UNHCR. “We can only assume that the two offices have been liasing,” explained Sanoto. He however, promised to look into the matter.
Efforts to solicit comments from Kagiso Funeral Parlour hit a blank as the general manager - operations, Jacob Ngqutwana, said; “if you are making inquiries relating to the Burundian guy, then call the Office of the President”.
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