Press Statement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PASSOP welcomes the closure brought by the settlement offered by the South African Police Service and accepted by Braam Hanekom While helping asylum seekers obtain documentation lawfully, Braam Hanekom suffered targeted and unlawful arrests in January 2008. He immediately embarked on legal action against the police as he believed that his rights were violated in a traumatic way, and that he had suffered damage to his reputation. The two arrests were on the 8th and 9th of January, they were reported by the Cape Times and Cape Argus (articles below). His matter was to finally be heard in the high court today, however half an hour before court proceedings the state offered a settlement which included full payment of all his legal costs (high court) and payment of an undisclosed amount of money. We hope that police officers will realise that reckless behavior on their part will not go unchallenged by members of the public. We welcome the settlement as we were confident in his case and during litigation the legal costs would have escalated. These costs are ultimately paid for by citizen and immigrant tax payers and would amount to an additional hundreds of thousand of rand being wasted, so a settlement is welcomed. Braam Hanekom has undertaken to donate every cent of his payout to human rights work, not only through PASSOP but also through other local organisations. For Comment contact Doug Leresche 0797127341