Reuters
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A South African mother and two accomplices were sentenced to life imprisonment Thursday for having tracked her 6-year-old daughter, in a case that drew attention to the national scale since the child disappeared last year.
Kelly Smith, her boyfriend Jacquen Appollis and their friend Steveno Van Rhyn were sentenced Damage and trafficking of the girl, Joshlin Smith, after having disappeared from a small town in the Western Cape.
In a trial that shocked the country, a witness said Kelly Smith told her that she had sold her daughter to a Sangoma, or traditional healer, for 20,000 rands ($ 1,100) and that the girl was desired for her “eyes and skin”.
Joshlin Smith has still not been found despite long police research.
Announcing their sentence Thursday, the judge of Haute Court Nathan Erasmus said that the fact that Kelly Smith, Appollis and Van Rhyn were drug consumers was not an excuse.
“There is nothing that I can find who bought and deserves a lower sentence that the hardest I can impose,” said Erasmus.
For kidnapping, the three received sentences of 10 years in prison.
