Alleged murderer of twins a suicide risk

A Spanish doctor accused of murdering his twin children in Cape Town has stopped eating and drinking and has become a suicide risk.

Mario-Ceasar Deus Yela's lawyer, William Booth, told the Wynberg Magistrate's Court yesterday that the conditions in Pollsmoor prison's hospital section, where "20 people share one toilet", had a "mental and physical" effect on his client.

When the bearded and long-haired Yela, 48, entered the court, he walked slowly and looked frail. He rocked gently back and forth in the dock as Booth tried to convince magistrate Goolam Bawa that the conditions in one of the country's most infamous prisons were unsuitable for his client.

• 'Filthy' prison hospital driving murder accused to suicide‚ says lawyerA Spanish doctor accused of murdering his twin children in Cape Town refuses to sleep on a "filthy mattress on the ground" in the hospital section of Pollsmoor Prison.

"I'm worried about his emotional state and his suicidal tendencies," said Booth.

Yela was arrested in Wynberg on April 7 after allegedly confessing to his ex-wife he had murdered the three-year-old children. The state claimed he called her to his rented apartment in Hout Bay, where his children were visiting, to confess to the crime.

Booth requested that Yela's psychiatrist, professor Tuviah Zabow, be granted access to the police docket to get information about Yela's "condition" before, during and after the alleged incident.

The case was postponed to April 25 and Bawa ordered that Yela be monitored to ascertain whether he was a suicide risk.