DNA tests lead to arrest of rape suspect
|Published
Johannesburg - An alleged serial rapist in Limpopo has been arrested after hundreds of villagers were subjected to compulsory DNA tests.
Police say the 42-year-old suspect, who is scheduled to appear in the Mokopane Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, has been positively linked to three murders and 12 rapes committed in the area between 2002 and last year.
Police spokesman Brigadier Hangwani Mulaudzi said the victims all came from villages around Mahwelereng township, near Mokopane.
The last victim was raped last year.
Now, after a reign of terror lasting for more than a decade, police believe they finally have their man behind bars.
On Sunday, Mulaudzi confirmed that men in villages such as Ga-Pila and Sekgakgapeng were tested in February after detectives visited their villages and subjected all men found in the area, who matched their brief, to compulsory DNA testing.
“We sought a court order and we were granted it,” he said.
Mulaudzi said the police relied on the Criminal Procedure Act to carry out the compulsory DNA tests.
But law professor at the Wits University School of Law and practising attorney at the Wits Law Clinic, Steve Tuson, said he believed that the compulsory testing of villagers had been unlawful.
He pointed out that DNA tests should be done only on identified suspects.
“They have subjected them to an arbitrary invasion of their privacy, which is completely unlawful,” said Tuson.
“What (the police) do is they use invasive investigative techniques, when there is nothing else against you,” said Tuson.
He suggested that men who had been subjected to the compulsory DNA tests would have been within their rights to refuse to be tested.
Mulaudzi said not all the men the investigators encountered had been tested.
“Those below the age of 25 were not tested, but obviously we were guided by the profile and the modus operandi (of the suspect),” he said.
He said similar compulsory testing had been done in the past, leading to the arrest and conviction of the serial rapist who operated in Phagameng township outside Modimolle.
The 45-year-old man was subsequently handed multiple life sentences for rape and murder.
Seven children aged between three and nine, and a woman went missing between 2004 and 2008 in Phagameng. Bodies of others were found buried in shallow graves on the mountain.
Mulaudzi said the suspected Mahwelereng serial rapist would appear in the Mokopane Magistrate’s Court on Monday on charges of rape and murder.
The Star