Court rules in favour of Walus parole
An application for leave to appeal a high court decision that convicted murderer Janusz Walus be released on parole, was unsuccessful.
It is not clear when Janusz Walus will be released on parole. He is serving a life sentence for the murder of SA Communist Party (SACP) leader Chris Hani 23 years ago.
North Gauteng High Court judge Nicolene Janse van Nieuwenhuizen denied on Thursday an application for leave to appeal against her decision last month that Walus should be paroled.
The application for leave to appeal was brought by Justice Minister Michael Masutha, who had earlier overruled a decision by the parole board that Walus , who had shot Hani at point blank range at his Boksburg home, should be granted parole after serving more than 22 years of a life sentence.
The judge dismissed the application for leave to appeal, saying it would not have a reasonable prospect of success before another court and that the State had not provided compelling reasons for the appeal to be heard.
However, lawyers representing Masutha in his bid to keep Walus behind bars, on Thursday said they would submit a petition in an attempt to be heard on appeal.
At the same time, Hani’s widow, Limpho Hani, told reporters her family planned to take its fight against the imminent release of Walus to the Supreme Court of Appeal.
Walus was supposed to have been released almost two weeks ago, but Masutha’s notice for an application for leave to appeal kept him locked up.
Janse van Nieuwenhuizen made her ruling that Walus should be paroled on 10 March, a decision widely criticised by the ANC and the SACP.
The judge ordered that the convicted murderer should be released within 14 days of her order.
That meant that Walus would have been paroled on 4 April.
Walus was initially sentenced to death, but his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
He had now served almost 23 years of the life sentence for the 1993 cold-blooded murder of Hani.
Co-conspirator in the murder, Clive Derby-Lewis, who provided Walus with the weapon used in the shooting, was released on medical parole in 2015.
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