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Karabus to ask for judgment in writing

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If all goes according to plan, Professor Cyril Karabus could be back home by Wednesday.

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Cape Town - If all goes according to plan, Professor Cyril Karabus, charged with manslaughter and falsifying documents in the United Arab Emirates nine months ago, could be back home by Wednesday.

Karabus was arrested while passing through Dubai in August last year in connection with the death of a young cancer patient he treated while working there in 2002.

Last month a court found him not guilty, but the prosecution appealed.

This week, a second court handed down a not-guilty verdict.

On Friday Karabus’s attorney, Michael Bagraim, said his client was still in the UAE, but that they had a plan of action. Their first order of business would be to obtain the judgment in writing.

“The judgment was given verbally, so we have made an application to get it in writing, which we hope to get (tomorrow),” he said.

Once they had this, they would be in a position to apply for Karabus’s passport, which should take another “day or two”, he said.

With these in hand, they could then apply to leave the country, which Bagraim hoped would be about Wednesday.

This is, however, dependent on the prosecution in the case not lodging another appeal.

They have 30 days to do so, but Bagraim said that they had had no indication yet of whether this would be done.

“They haven’t attempted to stop us from applying for the judgment, but we don’t know,” he said.

Nelson Kgwete, spokesman for the Department of International Relations and Co-operation, said that following the ruling this week, they were still waiting to find out whether an appeal would be lodged.

“At this stage, we don’t know what will happen next.”

He said Karabus’s attorneys would liaise with the prosecution, and once Karabus was cleared to leave, the department would step in.

“If they say they’re not going to appeal, then we will work as quickly as possible to get the professor home as soon as possible,” he said.

This week the health sciences faculty at UCT, where Karabus is an emeritus professor, urged colleagues to withdraw from the Africa Health Exhibition, which will be held in Joburg next month. The exhibition is run by a Dubai-based company, Informa Life Exhibition.

This, they said, would be in protest at the “ongoing unjust treatment” of their colleague.

“This supports the call by the South African Medical Association (Sama), the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA) and UCT’s School of Child and Adolescent Health (SCAH) to boycott the exhibition,” the faculty said in a statement.

“We also strongly endorse the Sama call for a boycott by doctors and all health professionals of employment in the UAE, and ask that they extend this to all UAE-linked organisations or businesses.”

The faculty said that Karabus, who was head of the paediatric haematology-oncology unit for more than 20 years, had “devoted his career to the care of children with cancer for more than 35 years, during which time he has earned the respect of colleagues, students, patients and international peers”.

Weekend Argus


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