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“I believe he was alive but for a minimal period,” is what Professor Steve Naidoo, a forensic pathologist with more than 30 years of experience, said on day eight at the reopened Timol Inquest at the North Gauteng High Court this afternoon.
Naidoo was testifying on the moments after Timol had fallen to his death.
He was giving his professional view on the death of political activist Ahmed Timol. An apartheid magistrate had ruled that he had committed suicide by jumping to his death from the 10th floor of the notorious John Vorster Square after being detained.
Timol’s family has over the years repeatedly denied this, and fought to have the case reopened in order to shed some light on his death.
They believe he was tortured and subsequently pushed from the 10th floor of the building.
Naidoo and Dr Shakeera Holland, also a forensic expert, both gave their insight into Timol’s injuries as well as the possible cause of his death.
They analysed the original post-mortem report conducted on him after his death in 1971.
A major point that both experts pointed out was that Timol had a depressed skull, which Holland said could only have been caused as a result of “blunt-force trauma” and was not consistent with the fall injuries.
Naidoo also echoed these sentiments, and drew up a reference list of 35 injuries that were recorded in the post-mortem.
Out of those injuries, only 10 were as a result of Timol falling. The rest, Naidoo said, were injuries which he had before he fell.
Judge Billy Mothle, who is presiding over the hearing, questioned Holland as to what could have caused the injury to the depressed skull.
Holland, who had brought into the courtroom a model of a human skull, pointed towards it and said: “So my lord, as I was saying … because the skull is actually such a thick bone, you would need some sort of object to cause that kind of an injury.”
She explained that through her experience, she had seen people who had been struck on their heads with “heavy blunt objects” like a hammer, which is something that would cause that kind of an injury to the skull.
Holland also discussed contusions, which she explained were bruises, found inside Timol’s mouth, and could have been caused by “a slap or maybe an open punch”.
She also questioned the initial report and said that it needed to be challenged.
Naidoo echoed these sentiments and said that there were “lots of shortcoming in this report”.
He said it was an “adequate” enough report, but was not as detailed as both Naidoo and Holland would have liked it to be.
“I would have used more descriptive words for the wounds,” Holland said.
Naidoo went into some detail about if Timol had indeed jumped to his own death, he would have had to climb over a radiator that was against the wall of the window in the room he was being held in. Timol would not have been able to do that because he had sustained injuries to his ankles and calves prior to his fall.
“I believe at the best scenario that the deceased was desperately ill. He would have hardly been in a position, if he was conscious that is, to be able to ambulate and walk to the window, or get off the chair, walk to the window, even place an attempt to achieve that attempt of heaving himself [out of the window],” Naidoo said.
Court proceedings continue tomorrow at 10am.
