‘WARDERS WANT TO KILL ME IN PRISON’

MBABANE - Incarcerated police officer Lucky ‘Obama’ Matsenjwa has been placed in solitary confinement.

Not only has he been isolated from other prisoners but warders at the Manzini Remand Centre are reported to have also heavily assaulted him. According to Matsenjwa, there was also a clandestine move to kill him while in prison. So serious is the situation that Matsenjwa has now filed an urgent application seeking the court’s intervention and/or protection before he could be killed by the warders while in custody.

Matsenjwa, who stands accused of having a hand in the death of another law enforcer, Mduduzi ‘S’chaza’ Matsebula, has since taken the Commissioner General of His Majesty’s Correctional Services, Isaiah Mzuthini Ntshangase, to court. He is seeking an order directing Ntshangase and/or his subordinates to remove him from solitary confinement with immediate effect and place him in any holding cell within the Zakhele Remand Centre. In his application, which has been filed under a certificate of urgency, Matsenjwa is further praying for an order interdicting the warders from assaulting him while still under their custody. Matsenjwa wants the court to also interdict the warders from threatening him with death.

The accused is also praying for an order directing police officers based at the Manzini Police Station to attend to him at Zakhele Remand Centre to obtain statements that would lead to the arrest of the Correctional officers. Narrating events leading to him being isolated from other prisoners, Matsenjwa stated that on December 17, 2018 around noon, he was removed from the cell he had been detained in at Zakhele Remand Centre. He said the senior officer who carried out his removal from the cell was King Maseko.

Reasons

“I was taken to a cell where I was put under solitary confinement. I was not given reasons for the removal. At around 8pm on December 17, 2018; officers came to where I was detained and heavily assaulted me,” submitted Matsenjwa. According to Matsenjwa, the officers were using batons to assault him. He told the court that during the assault he screamed ‘inyandzelayo’. Matsenjwa explained that while he was screaming, some inmates from the other cells nearby started shouting at the officers, saying they could hear that he was being assaulted. He alleged that the officers then ceased assaulting him.

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