Anger and aggression moved 13 Hawks policemen to allegedly torture and murder a suspect, the Cape High Court heard.
|||Cape Town - Anger and aggression moved 13 Hawks policemen to allegedly torture and murder a suspect, the Western Cape High Court has heard.
The prosecutor, Alta Collopy, put this to the defence’s first witness - one of the 13 accused officers, Nkosikhona Mthembu - during cross-examination yesterday.
Mthembu and his co-accused face a string of charges relating to the alleged murder of New Crossroads resident Sidwell Mkwambi, 24, and the assault of two others at the Hawks offices in Bellville South on February 9, 2009.
They maintain, however, that Mwambi jumped out of a moving vehicle in Modderdam (now Robert Sobukwe) Road.
Just a few weeks earlier, on January 18, Mthembu had been targeted in a shooting incident in New Crossroads while attending to police duties.
Although he had not been injured, the court heard, his colleague, Norton Ndabambi, who is also one of men accused of murdering Mkwambi, had been wounded.
Mkwambi had been fingered as one of three suspects in the shooting.
Collopy confronted Mthembu over the motivation behind the incident, saying that “anger and aggression” stemming from the shooting incident had moved him and his co-accused to “murder” Mkwambi.
“(I put it to you)… that your anger motivated you and that through that, (Mkwambi) was assaulted, tortured and ultimately murdered and that he was at no point in Modderdam Road jumping out of a moving vehicle,” she said.
But Mthembu was adamant that this was not the truth.
“It’s not so, as you are saying,” he responded.
He told how Mkwambi was to take them to Philippi to point out the other two suspects in the January shooting and the firearms they’d used.
They had gone in two police vehicles, but he had not been in the one Mkwambi was in. He testified that at one point, they passed the car, a Toyota Run X, in which Mkwambi was travelling with several other officers.
He had later seen the Run X flashing its lights and pulling over.
The officer in charge, Tobezi Jam Jam, had told him that Mkwambi had jumped out of the car while it was in motion.
Collopy and Judge Robert Henney asked Mthembu why he had not been interested to know if Mkwambi had been injured.
He replied that he had “looked” but had not fully inspected Mkwambi.
He had not, however, asked whether Mkwambi was all right.
Collopy also quizzed Mthembu about why the vehicle in which he had been a passenger had overtaken the Run X when it was Mkwambi who had to point out the place.
He said that while they had not known the street name or house number of the place they were going to, they knew it was in the part of Philippi near Nyanga.
They were to stop and wait for the Run X, which hadn’t been far behind and which would have let them know had they taken a wrong turn.
Collopy asked whether it was his practice to go on an operation with “half-baked information”. Mthembu said they were satisfied they had all the necessary information.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
leila.samodien@inl.co.za
Cape Times