By Karyn Maughan and Alex Eliseev
Glenn Agliotti said yesterday he was "very, very traumatised" by the experience of identifying Brett Kebble's body.
Gallery: Jackie Selebi Trial
Agliotti, who insists that the State's decision to charge him with Kebble's murder "is outrageous", was testifying about how he watched the slain mining magnate's bullet-riddled body being wheeled into a viewing room at the Hillbrow mortuary.
He was asked to identify the body because Kebble's brother Guy and father Roger, with whom Agliotti had had numerous tearful conversations in the hours after Kebble was killed, were respectively in Cape Town and overseas at the time.
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Agliotti said he had also filled in police paperwork related to Kebble's death, which the State is prosecuting as an "assisted suicide".
Testifying in the State's corruption case against former national police commissioner Jackie Selebi, Agliotti claimed Selebi had called him on the day after Kebble was killed, September 28, 2005, to ask him for money.
Selebi's defence team has vehemently denied that he had ever phoned Agliotti to ask him for money.
Instead, Selebi's advocate, Jaap Cilliers SC, repeatedly questioned Agliotti about whether and when he had complied with Selebi's alleged request for money. "I believe so, but I can't remember.
"It was a very traumatic stage for me. I had been on the phone the night before, the night that Mr Kebble was murdered."
Agliotti's final day in the witness box saw the bickering between prosecutor Gerrie Nel and Cilliers reach fever pitch. Judge Meyer Joffe urged them to "calm down".
According to Agliotti, one of his phone conversations with Selebi on the day he identified Kebble's body was witnessed by private investigator Andre Burger - who worked for Kebble security boss Clint Nassif and who was to hit the headlines for his rescue of 10-year-old kidnap victim Liam Aspeling.
Cilliers yesterday asked Agliotti if he was aware that Burger, who is appealing against his conviction and life sentence for the abduction and murder in 2000 of 29-year-old Sandy Botomane, had "serious problems" with Selebi.
Documents in Selebi's previous court wrangles with the State reveal that it was Selebi's unhappiness about Burger's role in Liam's rescue that saw the former member of the Soweto Murder and Robbery Squad being arrested and questioned by the police.
While Burger has never been charged with Liam's kidnapping, this did not stop Selebi from expressing anything but suspicion of him.
In a top-secret interview with Selebi about the corruption claims against him conducted by then Scorpions boss Leonard McCarthy, Selebi expressed unhappiness about Burger's unauthorised presence at the Kebble murder scene.
He said Burger "picked up the shells where the shooting took place".
While denying any suggestion that he cleaned up ballistics evidence from the scene, Burger has admitted that he took possession of Kebble's car within hours of the tycoon's shooting.
- This article was originally published on page 2 of The Star on November 04, 2009
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