11/02/2004 16:19 - (SA)

Pretoria - Consensual sex between male prisoners was still classified under the old offence of sodomy, the Jali Commission of Inquiry into prison mal-administration heard on Wednesday.

Evidence would be led before the commission that a provision to this effect still existed in a policy of the correctional services department, evidence leader Graham Barlow said on Wednesday.

And the provision was still being administered - with two Pretoria prisoners charged only about two weeks ago with committing sodomy, he said, while questioning the department's health care services director Maria Mabena.

Mabena said she was surprised to hear this.

Gap

In the morning, Mabena acknowledged there was a gap between policy developed for the treatment of rape victims in jail and its execution.

She conceded that prison health care officials were sometimes not informed of such policies.

"I acknowledge there is a gap that needs to be looked at," she testified.

Mabena was giving evidence on claims by former inmate Louis Karp that he was denied certain medical care after reporting an alleged rape by a fellow prisoner.

Karp, who regards himself as a woman and prefers to be called Louisa, claims he was raped several times and abused while awaiting trail for car theft in the Pretoria local prison in 2001 and 2002.

Mabena said she regarded it as a grave oversight that a semen sample Karp said he presented to his doctor was never sent for forensic testing.

The doctor, Kobeli Khomari, earlier conceded that Karp had been denied some of the prescribed care, that he was never counselled on HIV testing or treatment, and that the semen sample was never tested.

Mabena said there appeared to have been "gross non-compliance" with policy in Karp's case.

Eugene de Kock

Meanwhile former Vlakplaas commander Eugene de Kock was in the public gallery again on Wednesday in anticipation of evidence to be led implicating him in an alleged plot to fabricate evidence to discredit Karp.

Last week, evidence leader Graham Barlow told the commission that De Kock and Pretoria local prison head Nico Baloyi had been named in the alleged plot.

It was alleged, he said at the time, that Baloyi asked a prisoner to give false testimony. This prisoner, a former policeman, was allegedly helping prison warders draw up false statements.

De Kock was also implicated in the fabrication attempt, Barlow said.

He declined to name the source of the allegations as he feared for that person's safety. But he indicated the individual was prepared to testify before the commission.