Jacob Zuma and Thales lose fight to stay out of court in arms deal trial

FORMER president Jacob Zuma and his co-accused, Thales, are yet to decide whether they will file an appeal application against yesterday's Pietermaritzburg High Court ruling to dismiss the arms deal case against them.

- BONGANI HANS

Zuma, who now leads the Umkhonto weSizwe Party (MKP), had piggybacked on the giant French arms manufacturer's application for the permanent stay to escape being tried for fraud, corruption, racketeering, and money laundering charges.

Zuma was not in court yesterday.

The charges dated back to the 1998 arms deal, which the government had entered into with Thales, but whose trial has been delayed due to many factors. Those included attempts to get state prosecutor Advocate Billy Downer off the trial due to allegations of bias, which Judge Nkosinathi Chili had rejected in September last year.

After Chili's ruling yesterday, the State and defence teams agreed to postpone the case to December 4.

The postponement would give Thales time to decide whether to file an appeal against Chili's ruling. Zuma would also get time to go to a higher court to appeal against Chili's ruling that Downer should continue prosecuting the matter.

Regarding the stay of prosecution application, Thales's legal team had, on April 24, advanced an argument that continuing with the trial would be constitutionally unfair since its client's former directors, Pierre Moynto and Alain Thetard, who were its prime witnesses, had died.