The father of one of the boys allegedly raped by Muslim scholar Nezaam Ali says that he wants the disappearance of key documents investigated quickly and the matter taken to the High Court so that justice can be served.
Speaking for the first time to this newspaper, he recently said that jail time was the only acceptable compensation for the trauma the incident brought to his now 18-year-old son and the entire family.
The Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) recently confirmed that documents are indeed missing and that efforts are being made to replace them.
Based on what was told to this newspaper the medical certificates and birth certificates of the nine alleged victims are missing.
It is unclear how long it will take for replacements to be found and the matter taken to trial.
Still in shock at what has happened to his son, the man said he was not surprised when he heard that the documents were missing. “I knew it would happen. I figured it out,” he said.
Asked to explain, he said that the accused’s demeanor during the court hearing spoke volumes as he was often smiling. He said too that hours after being remanded to prison after facing the first set of charges, Ali was freed.
He said that what was frightening was that despite the charges, Ali is allowed to be around children. He said that whenever Ali sees him he would “hail” him up but he does not answer.
The man who joined the Muslim faith as a young man said that after Ali was charged he felt so guilty and upset that he left the faith. Four of his children including his then 13-year-old son were also in the faith and he has removed them as well.
He said he was haunted by the fact that though his son showed reluctance he still sent him to the Masjid. He said that his son’s life has been destroyed as he has evolved into a quiet child who isolates himself from family and friends. Counselling provided by the state, he said, did not help.
He is clinging to the hope that his son and the other alleged victims will get “some kind of justice” adding that with the change in government he was hopeful that the start of the case would have been accelerated.
Ali was charged in 2012 with raping nine boys and was committed to stand trial the following year. Shortly after the committal, his lawyer Nigel Hughes filed an action in the High Court to have the committal overturned. This was rejected by the court and it was ruled that the committal will remain.
It was the mother of three of the boys who last month informed this newspaper about the missing documents, which she had heard of months earlier but was not getting any help to confirm.
She had heard about the missing documents while at her place of worship and this was the reason she knew it was true.
The woman, who is also a Muslim, told this newspaper that she, in the company of an official from the Child Care and Protection Agency (CCPA), visited the Supreme Court to check on the case. A clerk showed them the case files but the medical certificates of the boys along with their birth certificates were missing. Her boys are now aged 15, 13 and 11.
A group of child rights advocates have since called for an investigation into the disappearance of the documents from the case files and said that no one should be exempted.
Based on what several lawyers have explained the DPP does not have to get involved at this stage since Ali has already been committed to stand trial. It is now within the jurisdiction of the High Court, this newspaper was told.
The legal experts who spoke to this newspaper expressed confidence that the case could be salvaged by a thorough investigation and the introduction of secondary evidence.
One lawyer said that the court has the power to call before it the magistrate who presided over the case, the clerk who dealt with the matter, the clerk of court and the prosecutor for an explanation as to what had become of the documents.
According to the attorney, the court can go through a process to ensure that replacement copies are sourced and these become secondary pieces of evidence, which can be used in the trial.
