Cape Town – Major-General Jeremy Vearey is disgusted that the Sunday Times could have sent Ayron Hyman to Cape Town Anti-Gang Unit commander Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear’s murder scene.
The Mitchells Plain cluster commander and head of the Anti-Gang Unit in the Western Cape is especially aggrieved by an “orchestrated campaign by common criminal and rogue police officers that painted targets on Kinnear and our backs”.
Kinnear’s death has sent shockwaves through the unit after being shot through the window of his car on arriving at his Bishop Lavis home on Friday afternoon. He died on the scene.
One of the last cases Kinnear testified in before his death had judgment handed down on Tuesday, which led to Ashwin Willemse and Waylin Abdulla being found guilty of the murder of Gregory Carelse.
At the time of his murder, Kinnear was also spearheading the investigation into alleged underworld boss Nafiz Modack and 10 former and current SAPS officers on suspicion of gun-related charges.
Commenting on Hyman’s presence at the murder scene, Vearey wrote on Facebook: ’’This adds insult to injury, especially after the Sunday Times apologised for their defamatory coverage on me, Major General Lincoln and Colonel Kinnear last year with reference to Modack.
“After its editor met with Lincoln and I (he) handed over tapes and documents given to Hyman by a rogue police officer attached to Crime Intelligence.
“The documents and tapes made for some interesting evidence. It detailed how the rogue unit was started by a Brigadier in Crime Intelligence in the Western Cape, named all members of that unit, and explained their line of report to Lieutenant-General Jula and the head of Crime Intelligence in the Western Cape.
“It exposed how they collaborated with Hyman to air defamation against us with the help of manufactured sources and innuendo. Even to the extent that Hyman knowingly identified me as a voice in conversation with Mohammed Hanware, a Modack man, illiciting a bribe.
“A ’mistake’ they called it in a subsequent apology in their newspaper.
’’This defamation campaign also exposed all the false cases they registered against Kinnear and I, using fabricated sources and statements from gangsters with an axe to grind. The Sunday Times apologised for this misrepresentation and false reporting.
’’Its Cape Editor also admitted to a local radio journalist that they had ’messed up’. The national editor even asked Lincoln and I to assist with an in-depth investigation by the Sunday Times into the activities of this Crime Intelligence rogue unit. We refused to help him clean a mess of their own making.
’’It was this orchestrated campaign by common criminals and rogue police officers that painted targets on Kinnear and our backs.
’’It is time to release the documents and tapes given to Lincoln and I by the then Sunday Times editor Bongani Siqoko and expose his journalist, all the rogue police officers involved and their alleged complicity with Modack, by own admission.
“Colonel Kinnear’s assassination calls for it. And we won’t rest until everyone, no matter how remotely connected, reap the whirlwind they have sown.”
Police Minister General Bheki Cele will today receive a full briefing on the murder of Kinnear before visiting his family home in Bishop Lavis, SAPS said in a statement.
Cele will also visit the family of another slain police official in Khayelitsha, Sergeant Thabile Mapona, who was off-duty when he was shot in his vehicle on arrival at home after dropping his wife at a local taxi rank
In November last year, police guards were placed at Kinnear’s home after two suspects were caught in possession of a hand grenade outside his house.
To the dismay of Kinnear’s family, the police protection was withdrawn the next month without explanation.
A third suspect was arrested later and the matter was set down on the Parow Court roll for October.
IOL