McBride off the hook in escort fracas
July 10 1999 at 12:01am
Senior Foreign Affairs official Robert
McBride has been let off the hook again.
Western Cape Director of Public
Prosecutions Frank Kahn has decided not to prosecute Mr McBride for any involvement
in the fracas at the Cachet hostess agency on Cape Town's Foreshore in May, but
the two men he was with will be prosecuted.
Mr McBride was in the company of
controversial city security company owner Cyril Beeka and another man, Olaf
Reucker, when they visited the hostess agency in the early hours of the
morning.
Mr Beeka and Mr Reucker allegedly
assaulted one of the employees, Jennifer Moreira.
Ms Moreira laid charges against the
three men, including Mr McBride, without knowing their identities.
Mr Kahn said he could find no evidence
linking Mr McBride to the assault, therefore a decision was made not to
prosecute him.
However, he said Mr Beeka and Mr
Reucker were to be charged with assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm
and pointing a firearm.
The police's organised crime unit,
which investigates protection rackets and drug sales at city nightclubs,
earlier recommended that Mr McBride and the other two men be prosecuted.
Mr McBride has repeatedly denied any
involvement in the alleged assault. He said he was sitting at the bar in the
hostess club when the assault took place.
Mr McBride could not be contacted by
the Saturday Argus for comment yesterday.
His wife Paula said, however, that they
had not yet been notified by Mr Kahn's office in connection with the latest
development.
The incident at the hostess club
sparked huge controversy, with opposition parties calling for Mr McBride's
dismissal.
Mr McBride has a history of brushes
with the law.
He was arrested in Mozambique last year
on charges of gun-running and spent seven months in a Maputo prison but was
cleared of all charges earlier this year.
He claimed that he had been framed by
South African police agents and that he had been investigating illegal gun
running as part of his work for the Gun Control Commission.
Mr McBride first hit the headlines when
he was a member of the African National Congress's military wing Umkhonto we
Sizwe and was sentenced to death for the 1986 bomb attack on Magoo's bar in
Durban in which three women were killed.
He escaped the gallows when his death
sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
He was released from prison amid
controversy in 1992 in terms of a deal between the National Party government
and the ANC.
Mr McBride currently works in an
after-hours operations communications room in the Department of Foreign
Affairs.
He was removed from his position as
head of the Asia desk after his arrest in Mozambique.
