A DISABLED man was beaten unconscious by a police officer on May Day in the grounds of the Central Police Station in front of his six-year-old son, while two other officers held his arms. The victim, Sanders Vital, is a disable person having lost his leg in a shooting incident some ten years before.
Vital identified his attacker as police officer Nelson Molle. Vital said that Molle started assaulting him as soon as he came out of the police van in the gymnasium car park, behind the Central Police station. He said that the punches kept raining down on his face as he was dragged by the two other officers to the grounds of the police station. Eventually, he said he passed out.
Vital said when he came round he found himself at the English River clinic. The medical report signed by the medical officer on duty gave the time of his arrival there as 07.45 pm. After he had been attended to by the doctor on duty, he was taken by the police and locked up at the Beau Vallon Police Station until the morning. Upon release the next morning he was asked to sign a form binding him to pay R500 if he does not present himself to the Magistrate Court on Mont Fleuri Police Station (sic) station at 10.00 am on 12th May.
Although the form said that he had been charged with “threatening violence”, Vital said no police officer spoke to him nor was he interviewed by a police officer.
Vital said his ordeal started at about 4.30 pm at sea between Cerf Island and Mahe. He said he was returning from a picnic in his motor boat together with other friends in another boat, when they were accosted by a vessel of the Coast Guard with 5 soldiers heavily armed with AK-47 assault rifles. The coast guard soldiers told them that they were wanted by the police and ordered to head for the coast guard station next to the New Port.
On arrival at the coast guard station, they were told to wait for the police. Some half an hour later two police vans arrived and all eight of them were bundled in the police van and taken to the Mont Fleuri police station. They spent altogether five to ten minutes at the Mont Fleuri police station, all the while being kept in the van. Then they were driven to the Central Police station.
Vital said that everyone in the two boats they were using was arrested and detained overnight. Among them Jean-Paul Pierre, a serving soldier with the SPDF and a friend, who he was with at the picnic on Cerf Island. Vital said he could not figure out why he and all his friends were arrested and held overnight in police jails. What he remembered, however, was that as soon as police officer Noll alighted from the police van at the coast guard station he said aloud for everyone to hear, that he wanted Sanders Vital.
Sanders Vital said that it was clear that the assault on him was premeditated. He said that he is seeking legal advice to try and bring charges of assault and grievous bodily harm against police officer Noll and the other police officers who were with him.
The ordeal of Sanders Vital in the hands of the police attests once again to the fear that Police Commissioner Waye Hive is either not in control of the Seychelles Police Force or else he has a hidden agenda. The incident also shows that the military, of which the Coast Guard is a branch, is being used against civilians contrary to the Constitution, a practice common during the one-party state. The military has neither right nor the power to arrest civilians unless a state of emergency has been declared.
The episode is not an isolated incident, and police officer Noll is not a rogue officer. We have reason to believe that brutes like police officer Noll are employed specifically for this kind of work. The fact that they can now be exposed in the press is the only thing they had not bargained for.