The trial of an Omaheke region resident convicted of a series of rapes and robberies committed at Gobabis in 2015 and 2017 is scheduled to be concluded with his sentencing at the end of November.
Judge Dinnah Usiku postponed the sentencing of Richard Haoseb (36) to 30 November at the end of a presentence hearing in the High Court at Windhoek Correctional Facility on Friday.
Usiku heard oral arguments from state advocate Palmer Kumalo and legal aid lawyer Eliaser Shiikwa after she found that Haoseb is capable of understanding court proceedings and making a proper defence, and ordered that proceedings in his trial should continue in the ordinary way.
The order was made in connection with two reports by psychiatrists who examined Haoseb to assess his mental condition, after Shiikwa applied in May last year for him to be referred for psychiatric observation.
After hearing the two psychiatrists testify on their findings, with both concluding Haoseb was not mentally fit to be tried, Usiku found that there was a conflict in the two doctors’ findings and that their opinions were of no real assistance to the court and stood to be rejected.
The one psychiatrist conceded in her testimony that she could have come to a different conclusion about Haoseb’s ability to understand court proceedings if she had been given more information about proceedings in his trial, such as that he conducted his own defence and cross-examined state witnesses himself and that most of the trial had been concluded before he was referred for psychiatric observation, Usiku recounted in the ruling she delivered on Friday.
Usiku also noted that during his trial, Haoseb’s cross-examination of witnesses and the defence he raised to the charges he faced were proper, and there was no evidence indicating he was not capable of understanding court proceedings.
She further said the first indication of mental illness in Haoseb’s medical records dated from 2024, and there was no indication he had a mental illness in 2015 and 2017, when the incidents for which he was charged and later convicted took place.
Usiku found Haoseb guilty on 12 charges near the end of March last year.
The charges include five counts of rape, two counts of housebreaking and robbery, and four charges of robbery.
Haoseb was convicted of breaking into a house at Gobabis during night-time on 2 December 2015, threatening three women inside the house with a knife, and raping and robbing two of the women.
The third woman, who was pregnant, was spared.
He was arrested after that incident, and was released on bail about six months later, Shiikwa has informed the court.
Haoseb was also found guilty of holding a woman at knifepoint at Gobabis on 21 December 2017, robbing her of her cellphone and raping her. That incident happened during daytime.
Usiku further found that Haoseb again broke into a house at Gobabis on 22 December 2017, threatened a 17-year-old girl inside with a knife and robbed and raped her.
On the same night as that incident, Haoseb kidnapped a woman while threatening her with a knife and then raped her, Usiku found as well.
Shiikwa proposed on Friday that Haoseb should not be sentenced to more than 10 years’ imprisonment on each of the rape charges, and that some of those sentences, or parts of it, should be ordered to run concurrently.
Kumalo, however, remarked that Haoseb had “gone on a criminal spree” during which he terrorised women, and argued that he should not expect any leniency from the court.
Haoseb should be sentenced to the minimum prescribed prison term of 15 years on each of the rape charges, Kumalo suggested.
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