SEARCH FOR JUSTICE: John Susdorf, a Canadian citizen of Hebrew origin and former soldier, during his recent interview in the THISDAY newsroom in Dar es Salaam. Standing beside him is his son Christopher.
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TITO MGANWA
Dar es Salaam
A 70-YEAR OLD Canadian citizen, John Susdorf, is seeking President Kikwete’s intervention after being allegedly roughed up by a group of Tanzanian soldiers in Kibaha District, Coast Region, dragged to a police station, and charged with disturbing the peace earlier this year.
Susdorf claims he was thoroughly beaten up by four uniformed members of the Tanzania People’s Defence Forces (TPDF) from the Nyumbu military camp in Kibaha on April 23. He said the incident occurred as he was trying to defend his son Christopher against expulsion from Nyumbu Primary School.
’’It all started when I went to the school to ask teachers why they expelled my son after he refused to be flogged for going to school late,’’ he said.
Flanked by young Christopher himself, the Canadian national claimed in an interview in THISDAY’s newsroom in Dar es Salaam that teachers at the school had a habit of forcing pupils to do frog jumps after administering corporal punishment.
’’That is a military punishment. I told them that schoolchildren are not soldiers, and the teachers are not army generals,’’ said Susdorf, stating that he himself was a former soldier serving in special foreign battalions in West Germany between 1957 and 1961.
Continuing with his narration, he said after arguing with the teachers for a while, four soldiers arrived from the Nyumbu military installation and started physically assaulting him.
’’The army has no jurisdiction over civilians...that is the work of the police. I am a 70-year-old man, but I was physically attacked by four soldiers without provocation, in front of my son,’’ he said.
He identified his assailants as Corporal Abdallah Ngueillizi, Corporal Frank Robert, Sergeant Pastory (military police) and Corporal Augustine Mjaya (military police).
’’Without any introduction or warning, Corporal Abdallah kicked me on my left leg. I fell down on the schoolyard ground, and the soldiers started to flog me savagely with military belts while at the same time kicking me all over the body with their army boots,’’ said Susdorf.
’’As a result of the beating, I sustained serious injuries and was hospitalised for several weeks,’’ he told THISDAY.
He said in his distraught state, he was dragged by the soldiers to the Mkuza Police Station and later charged with causing a disturbance at the school in criminal case number 89/2007, currently proceeding at the Kibaha Resident Magistrate’s Court in Coast Region.
He said all he is seeking is justice for himself and his son Christopher, who also holds a Canadian passport.
Describing himself as a land surveyor by profession, Susdorf said he does not have any confidence in the Kibaha Court to mete out fair justice, and has formally written a letter to the High Court requesting that the pending case against him be transferred to the Kisutu Resident Magistrate’s Court in Dar es Salaam.
Apart from presenting his complaints against the alleged military brutality to State House in Dar es Salaam, the Canadian national said he has also sought intervention from the Prime Minister’s Office, the former Chief of Defence Forces George Waitara, and the Canadian embassy in Dar es Salaam.
He said his first brush with Tanzanian courts came in another criminal case back in 2002, when he was jailed by the Kibaha court.
He said he successfully appealed against the conviction and sentence, and was cleared by the Tanzanian Court of Appeal, which in 2005 declared the trial at the lower court in Kibaha was null and void.
According to Susdorf, the Court of Appeal also described the sentence imposed on him as ’illegal.’
He said he believed he had been targeted partly because of his Jewish faith and the fact that he is a foreign national.
Source: Thisday
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