Former special advisor Vincent Likoro in court: photo courtesy of The Namibian

The former special advisor sentenced to 10 years in prison for raping a colleague a Rundu has exhausted his lifelines.

The Supreme Court has worked back on several irregularities that have occurred to bring his appeal of the rape conviction and sentence in order to arrive at its decision.

That decision is that Likoro should not have been granted permission to appeal in the first place.

Judges Christie Liebenberg and Dina Usiku had refused Likoro permission to appeal his conviction and sentence in December 2017. However, in an unfortunate turn of events, Judges Usiku sat on another Likoro appeal brought before her and Judge Johanna Salionga and this time, they allowed him to appeal.

However, they forgot to set aside her initial decision to appeal, where Judges Usiku and Liebenberg had found that he should not appeal because the appeal would not succeed.

Justice Hoff with Justices Hosea Angula and Baaitse Nkambinde agreeing says that turn of events left two-conflicting High Court orders.

Justice Hoff has set aside the Supreme Court’s involvement in Likoro’s case and struck it from the roll.

He has proceeded to dismiss the High Court’s latter decision and upheld the prior dismissal of Likoro’s appeal giving him the answer, that his case cannot be appealed for lack of prospects.

Likoro was convicted and sentenced on 18 January 2016 and had been out of custody pending the conclusion of his appeals.