Fourteen months after he was convicted and sentenced to 15 years for corruption and defeating the ends of justice, former top cop Jackie Selebi challenged his conviction in the Supreme Court of Appeal (SCA) on Tuesday morning, saying his conviction was largely due to a conspiracy against him.
Arguing through his counsel Jaap Cilliers SC, he said his conviction was largely based on evidence by Glenn Agliotti, whose credibility was questionable.
Agliotti, a man the former National Police Commissioner had defended, saying he was his “friend, finish and klaar”, had been the State's key witness but the trial judge had found him not to have been a credible witness.
“We submit that Agliotti misled the court. The trial court agreed with us that the R200 000 (Agliotti said he paid Selebi in 2004), was not proved. It was proved that he lied,” Cilliers told the court.
But Judge Snyders, one of the five judges hearing the case, shot his argument down, saying it made no sense to expect Agliotti to present documented proof of the payments made.
“Nobody who is going to commit corruption is going to keep a paper trail of what he did... Payments made so that's the difficulty of this case,” said Snyders.
The former top cop was not in court on Tuesday morning to watch as the SCA judges grilled his counsel, who had initially launched into lies he said the State had built its case on.
Cilliers seemed to annoy the judges when he derailed from points of the appeal, arguing largely about how the State secured a conviction on lies.
“Somebody out there made allegations about the appellant. You should bear in mind that there were people out there who made it their business to discredit the appellant and have him tried. The whole point of investigations was based on false grounds,” said Cilliers.
But Judge Snyders told him the SCA's role was to deal with factors surrounding whether “ambits of laws of the criminal procedure”, while Judge Mthinyane pointed out that they were “dealing with dead issues” while they were “eager to get into the case”.
“The question is whether they (State) made a case as required by the statute. Let's see what happened at the trial. The difficulty is that you seem to place a lot of focus on lies. At the end of the day, this court has to deal with factual findings of the trial court,” said Judge Snyders.
Among issues Selebi wants the SCA judges to look at is Agliotti's credibility and “improper” methods the now defunct crime busting unit – the Scorpions or Directorate of Special Operations – applied when conducting investigations against him.
“We submit that the trial court erred to accept Agliotti's version after it specifically found that he was a dishonest witness,” said Cilliers.
Sentenced in August 2011, Selebi was only granted leave to appeal only his conviction, not sentencing, by Johannesburg High Court Judge Meyer Joffe.
Judge Joffe said Selebi could appeal his conviction for benefits Agliotti got in return for payments he made to Selebi.
The judge had found Selebi had received cash and other gifts in the form of expensive clothing in return for favours.
The hearing continues. - The Star