‘He will get justice’

Published Jan 27, 2015

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Cape Town - With greyish hair, muscular build and arms etched with tattoos, David Forbes, 48, stood in the dock of the Cape Town Magistrate’s court on Monday, accused of murder.

Less than 5km away the shrouded body of Forbes’s alleged victim, Toufiq Joseph, 23, was being laid to rest in the Observatory Muslim cemetery.

Forbes, a consultant to Ultra Music Festival SA, being hosted in the city next month, allegedly shot Joseph in the parking lot of the Engen garage in Orange Street on Saturday afternoon. Then he drank a soft drink and smoked a cigarette while he waited for police.

Forbes, being held in the Caledon Square police cells, was due to appear in court again on Tuesday, after being assessed by the district surgeon and treated for a cut on his forearm.

On Monday Toufiq Joseph’s grieving father, Ebrahiem Joseph, said: “I don’t know what went wrong there. No matter who that man is or where he works, he didn’t have the right to kill. He will get justice in this life and the next.”

In court, Forbes, neatly dressed in a grey shirt over a black T-shirt and light blue jeans, stood quietly in the dock as his lawyer, Ross McKennan, said: “We have played open cards with the State, and I can say that my client has no pending matters and outstanding warrants.”

Forbes has a previous conviction of common assault related to an incident in 1996 when he paid an admission of guilt fine at the Germiston police station.

The court heard the State needed time to compile more information for Forbes’s full bail profile.

Prosecutor Dail Andrews said Forbes’s address needed to be confirmed.

Presiding magistrate Nicky Oaks asked why he was being held at the central police station, and McKennan explained that Forbes needed to be assessed by a district surgeon. McKennan said that Forbes’s address had also been verified and that officers had been to see his wife at their Hout Bay home.

McKennan said he was aware it was a serious offence, and that the State would not release Forbes on Monday.

In explanation to why Forbes was being held at Cape Town cells, McKennan said detectives needed to take photographs of a wound on his arm and his blood needed to be taken.

“His blood must be sent to a district surgeon.”

When Oaks enquired about the wound – a cut above Forbes’s wrist – he quickly rolled up his sleeve exposing his tattooed arm, before she said: “Looks like a cut about 4cm.” The State agreed.

“So the district surgeon will examine that wound and take blood for the investigation?” Oaks asked before postponing the matter until today.

Meanwhile, after the Joseph family spent two difficult days organising the necessary documentation to get Toufiq Joseph’s body released from the morgue, he was laid to rest in Mowbray on Monday.

The road outside the Sulaimania Masjid thronged with family and friends who had travelled from as far as Joburg to pay their respects.

Inside the mosque, the men prayed and viewed the body, before it was ceremoniously carried out and loaded in a vehicle to go to the Observatory Muslim burial ground.

“We had to fight to get Toufiq out the morgue to bury him,” said his father. “They didn’t want to give us his possessions.

“They said we had fraudulent papers. They said his temporary ID wasn’t valid.”

The grieving father said it was a relief for the family that Toufiq could finally be buried.

“It brings me peace because he’s in his resting place.”

He said he would attend all Forbes’s future court dates along with his family. He still had no idea what could have motivated the shooting.

“My son was killed. He didn’t have a gun. He was sitting in the car.”

The news that Forbes was not in fact a security guard as originally believed, but the promoter and owner of H20 Party and a consultant to Ultra Music Festival SA, did not mean anything to Joseph’s parents.

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