No answers two months after
man’s police custody death
2015-02-16 10:03
(File, Nielen
de Klerk, News24)
Pretoria - The mother of a Pretoria man who
was shot and killed in police custody is still searching for answers two months
after his death.
Lindiwe Sithole told Eyewitness
News that police had first said her son William
had committed suicide and later said he was shot dead while trying to escape.
She said the shirt he was wearing had five
bullets holes, four of them in the front.
EWN also reported that officers implicated in
the shooting allegedly questioned the same witnesses as the Independent
Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
Sithole was arrested on 17 December last
year, after he was suspected of involvement in a robbery. Several hours later
he was dead.
The
Star reported in September last year that 337
people died at the hands of police in the six months between April and
September 2013.
Ipid also investigated 1 924 cases of assault
and 53 rapes by police officers in that six-month period last year.
Ipid also told shocked MPs last year when it
said that it was investigating more than 60 rape cases involving police
officers, said Sapa.
According to a document tabled by IPID on
Wednesday morning at a briefing of Parliament's police portfolio committee, 66
rapes by police officers occurred between April and September this year,
compared to 53 rapes during the same six-month period last year.
In November last year, a woman in Saldanha
Bay alleged that a police officer raped her when she went to report that she
had been gang raped, EWN stated.
