Three poachers are
finally convicted of killing a rhino in KwaZulu-Natal: A magistrate lost
his patience after a decade of delays -- prosecution and defence
sources estimated that somewhere between 12 and 25 defence attorneys had
been engaged and later dismissed by the accused.
One of the world's
longest rhino poaching trials came to a swift and decisive conclusion on
Monday, 25 March when a Durban magistrate lost patience after nearly 10
years of "deliberate and unreasonable delays" by three men who tried,
but ultimately failed, to drag out their trial indefinitely.
Convicting all
three poachers based on the "overwhelming evidence" placed before him,
senior Regional Court Magistrate Logan Naidoo declared that it would
have been a travesty to allow the three men to continue holding the
justice system to ransom any longer.
The three men,
Muntugokwakhe Khoza, 50, Ayanda Buthelezi, 40, and SANDF officer Mduduzi
Xulu, 51, were arrested on 26 August, 2009, hours after a rhino was
gunned down in the Hluhluwe-iMfolozi Game Reserve -- the world cradle of
white rhino conservation, where this species was brought back from the
brink of extinction almost a century ago by the Natal Parks Board.
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