CONVICTED DOG POLICEMEN WERE "VICTIMS OF A SYSTEM", COURT TOLD.

Four men convicted of setting their police dogs on illegal immigrants in a 1998 "training exercise" were not monsters but rather victims of an imperfect system, the Pretoria High Court heard on Thursday. Testifying for three of the men, criminologist Irma Labuschagne said they have shed many tears since their arrest. "They are not hard people now," she told the court. "They were shocked when they first saw the video (portraying their deeds). They cannot believe that it was really them." Jacobus Petrus Smith, Lodewyk Christiaan Koch, Robert Benjamin Henzen and Eugene Werner Truter were found guilty on Monday of assaulting Mozambicans Gabriel Pedro Timane, Alexandre Pedro Timane and Sylvester Cose on January 3, 1998. Testifying in mitigation of sentence for Koch, Henzen and Truter, Labuschagne said they were victims of a police system in which a subculture of violence could still be found. In this system, they lost their individuality in a group "which then became a monster in total discontrol". Their training desensitised them to violence to a large extent and they were under immense pressure to perform. "They only now came to realise that they actually used live people," Labuschagne said. She told the court there was no need for the men to be rehabilitated, and they did not pose any danger to society. For Smith, traumatologist Peter Jones testified the behaviour displayed in the video was typical of someone suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). He diagnosed Smith as suffering from this disorder, as well as depression and burn-out. This was the result of repeated exposure to trauma during his career, and resulted in a blurring of morality. It also affected his blameworthiness. "It is highly questionable whether he should have been allowed to operate in the dog unit at all," Jones testified. In the morning, the court heard that setting police dogs on illegal immigrants for "practice", was regarded as justified in the light of rampant crime in the country. "We all knew that what we were doing was wrong," former dog handler Hannes Brits testified in mitigation of sentence. "But we saw it as justified in the context of crime. It was a method used for a greater cause." Brits, a former colleague of the four men, told the court he was ashamed to admit that using criminal suspects as "targets" was regarded as acceptable. "It was the only way we knew to achieve our goal," he said. The goal was to teach one's dog to bite. Brits said the method was not unusual, and every dog ...