PRESS RELEASE:

29 September 2021

The criminal trial of murdered anti-apartheid activist, Ahmed Timol will on Thursday, 30 September 2021 be removed from the criminal court roll at the South Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg in Court 4F. 

Murder accused João Rodrigues passed away on Tuesday, 7 September 2021 without having his day in court. After been charged on 30 July 2018 for murder and defeating the aims of justice, he subsequently made 19 court appearances. This was to be his twentieth.

His bid to the SCA and the Full Bench for his application to permanently stay his trial was dismissed. Rodrigues was granted leave to appeal to the Constitutional Court. A court date is still awaited.

In the State’s indictment presented at Rodrigues’s first court appearance, among the more than 50 witnesses listed to to testify included forensic pathologists, Dr Steve Moodley and Shakeera Holland, trajectory expert Tivesh Moodley, fellow detainees Dr Salim Essop and Mohammad Timol, comrades Ronnie Kasrils, Stephanie Kemp, Essop and Nasim Pahad amongst others.

Evidence to be presented by trajectory expert Tivesh Moodley included simulation of the crime scene.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT

Scenario 6: Mr Timol being rolled from the roof of the building with the torso parallel to the face of the building and the body flying horizontally down past the building, typical of somebody who is incapacitated to stand on their own strength and was placed on the parapet wall of the roof and rolled/pushed off the side of a building.

https://www.ahmedtimol.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/C10-Trajectory-report-by-Tivesh-Moodley.pdf