Judge admits he’s behind leak of Thabo Bester’s escape to the media

By Rorisang Kgosana | TimesLIVE |

A frustrated judge leaked information on Thabo Bester’s escape to publication GroundUp due to the slow investigation by law enforcement officials who had initially requested that the revelation remain silent.

The Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), which inspects prisons, turned to the media to reveal that the burnt body found in Mangaung prison last year was not that of Bester.

Former justice Edwin Cameron, the JICS’s inspecting judge, said they met with the police in August last year with the DNA and autopsy findings that were put together by himself and the CEO Vick Misser.

The police requested Cameron to not publicise these findings to give them a chance to complete their own investigations, he said.

“When we met SAPS, we met with the top seven police officers involved in Bloemfontein. They were on top of it. All of them were on top of it. The police said to us at that stage that they have two more witnesses in Mangaung and don’t want anything publicised at this point, and we deferred to that,” he said.

But after police interviewed the two witnesses and investigations into their findings were moving at a slow pace, Cameron said he reached out to the media in September.

“I started informing trusted people in the media, who have already been identified, in the course of September. I relied on my belief in the integrity of the editor whom I’ve known for a long time. I trust his integrity greatly. The second thing is that I supplied GroundUp only with publicly accessible information.

“I acted to alert the public … The people I alerted acted with care and caution and immense responsibility and scepticism.”

He said he also had a telephonic conversation with minister of justice Ronald Lamola after the regional correctional service commissioner declined to discuss Bester’s escape.

Cameron admitted that everyone dragged their feet in the matter, particularly G4S.

“G4S thought they could get away with dismissing two or three lower personnel … The report from G4S persisted in the fiction that Bester died.”