Durban - Suspended KwaZulu-Natal Hawks head General Johan Booysen has laid charges of fraud and defeating the ends of justice against provincial prosecutions boss Moipone Noko, saying she “misrepresented and told untruths” in a PowerPoint presentation which resulted in his being re-charged with racketeering.
Booysen was previously successful in having the charges withdrawn after a ruling by Durban High Court Judge Trevor Gorven that there was no evidence before then acting national director of public prosecutions Nomgcobo Jiba to authorise his prosecution. But Booysen was charged again this year on the say-so of the new national director, Shaun Abrahams, and apparently on the same evidence.
Booysen - and 26 members of the now defunct Cato Manor serious and violent crime unit who are also facing charges relating to allegations that they ran a “death squad” - has instituted a fresh challenge, insisting that there is still no evidence to support the prosecution and seeking a review of Abrahams’s decision. He says the record of the decision - as provided by the national director as part of the review process - proves that Noko misled Abrahams.
Booysen confirmed on Monday that he had laid criminal charges against Noko at the Loop Street police station in Pietermaritzburg over the weekend. Approached for comment, Noko said: “This is indeed a surprise to me. I am not aware of these charges.”
Booysen said: “The penalties if one is convicted under the Prevention of Organised Crime Act are a fine of R1 million or life imprisonment. It is for this reason that there is a safety net to ensure that these prosecutions are only ever brought when absolutely warranted... to make sure it is done with due diligence and to avoid abuse.”
He says Noko’s PowerPoint presentation contains “misrepresentations and untruths” and omission of important facts. “It is a regurgitation of the same information which was settled in the Gorven judgment,” he said.
Issues he raises, which he will spell out in his soon-to-be-filed affidavit in the review application, include that Noko failed to mention in several matters that those gunned down by police had tested positive for primer residue.
“She states that a firearm was planted at a scene... without any direct evidence.”
In another matter, he said, she “introduces evidence” suggesting that the deceased was lying “defenceless”, when this was not a word used by their own ballistic expert. And again she “disingenuously” excluded the fact that the deceased tested positive for primer residue and cartridges on the scene were linked to his firearm.
Regarding another statement, Booysen said she had not mentioned that it was “hearsay twice removed”.
“In all cases, Noko imputes that Cato Manor planted firearms on the scenes to create the impression that their lives were in danger. There is no evidence in any of the discovered dockets about this.”
Regarding omissions, Booysen said Noko had “conveniently” not alerted the national director to the character of one of the witnesses, Colonel Rajen Aiyer, who had been discredited by a regional court magistrate in an unrelated matter and by advocate Nazeer Cassim, who chaired Booysen’s internal disciplinary hearing, who described him as a “dismal witness”.
“It is clear she deliberately couched the presentation to convince the NDPP to authorise our prosecution on racketeering... She cannot claim ignorance... all the facts are in dockets which, on her own version, she considered.”
The criminal trial - in which the men are facing 116 criminal charges - has been set down for just more than two months, starting at the end of January next year. This could be affected by the outcome of the review application which will be heard later this year.
The Mercury