Government of the Republic of Namibia v Getachew (SA 21/2006) [2008] NASC 4; (15 April 2008): The appeal followed a High Court case in which an immigration officer committed perjury during his testimony in court resulted in N$65 000 being awarded to an Ethiopian resident of Namibia for the three months that he had spent in illegal detention in 2004 and 2005. The summons was instituted by Dereje Getachew who sued the Namibian Government for wrongful and unlawful arrest and consequential detention. The court unreservedly held that the trial judge erred when he determined that the respondent’s arrest was unlawful: ‘The arrest was justified on the basis of a clearly proved reasonable suspicion on the part of the arresting immigration officer that the respondent’s presence in Namibia was probably unlawful.’ The court decided the detention was lawful for the first period of 28 days, but was unlawful from 15 October 2004 to 27 January 2005.
Source: Legalbrief
5 thoughts on “Namibia supreme court rules in favor of an Ethiopian immigrant”
what does our dectators learn from this?
VIVA Namibia for being fair to the Ethiopian when all the world knows that Justice in his own country does not exist.
It is very interesting to learn that the country ruled by white for a decade become free and exemplify justice to other who were deprived of the same. Unfortunately, a country that claim a 3000 years of independence from colonial rule (i.e. Ethiopia) has to go another several years to render justice to its own citizens let alone foreign nationals accused of certain violation of established rules be it statutory or constitutional. In view of this I congratulate both the Namibia court and the Ethiopian who won his case. Begashaw Ayele, from Boston
we must understand that where ever you go you carry your rights with you so it does not really matter whether you are namibian or not, at the end of the day you are a human being and you should be treated as such…congratulations for carrying out your obligations!
aweh,kavari law student i can see…but yes that is true and that realy was an interesting rule,surely the people will keep trusting our justice system