[Make no mistake… CRIME DOES PAY… if you are non-White… living in South Africa. The Govt makes a lot of noise about fighting crime… but let’s the criminals go… on technicalities… Its all a sham… I still say… OUR GOVERNMENT IS BEHIND THIS CRIME WAVE… IT LIKES IT… IT LOVES IT… THE CRIMINALS ARE ITS FOOT SOLDIERS… harrassing Whites… trying to drive us off our land and out of this country… I still say it is a “Secret War against White People”… Jan]

Arrested in a blaze of publicity, significant numbers of alleged “high-flyer” gang leaders are being acquitted as courts refuse to accept the evidence of self-confessed criminal witnesses.

More than a year after police announced the arrest of 272 “top gangsters”, all but one of the alleged top 10 has been released on bail. And Cape High Court murder cases against two of them, Ernest “Lastig” Solomons and Bazil “Biza” Stevens, ended in acquittal.

Alleged gang kingpin Quinton “Mr Big” Marinus was released on bail by the Bellville magistrate’s court in October, despite facing 47 charges, including four of murder.

This prompted Western Cape Community Safety Minister Leonard Ramatlakane to tell the Cape Argus he had believed the case against Marinus was strong enough not to warrant the granting of bail.

‘These people who, in exchange for their freedom, pointed a finger at him’
“By the time Quinton Marinus was arrested, we had already built up a strong case against him… and 99 percent of the information we needed was available.

“In my view, the 47 charges against Marinus are not child’s play, but, at the end of the day, it is up to the presiding officer to decide whether bail should be granted.”

During Marinus’s bail application, it emerged that the state’s case against him relied on the evidence of an alleged double murderer, a self-confessed rapist and killer, two alleged drug dealers and perlemoen smugglers, and an ex-police officer facing charges of drug-dealing and perlemoen smuggling.

Police captain Heinrick Cockrill admitted at the hearing that the state witnesses were all “rotten to the core”. He told the court a murder charge against one of the state witnesses had been withdrawn after he was shot in the head and left unfit to stand trial.

Advocate Pete Mihalik, for Marinus, put it to Cockrill that the case against his client was doomed to failure.

‘They are usually accomplices in the crimes’
Mihalik said: “(The case) won’t succeed because the police once again have relied on murderers, rapists, robbers, drug dealers and perlemoen smugglers to prove their case.

“There is just no other evidence against (Marinus), except these people who, in exchange for their freedom, pointed a finger at him.”

During Marinus’s bail application, Piet Viljoen, a member of the police’s Provincial High Flyers task team, disclosed that much of the murder case against alleged Junior Mafia leader Mujahid Daniels was based on the evidence of two self-confessed double murderers.

Viljoen confirmed that the man who had shot Daniels’s alleged murder victim, apparently at his behest, would testify against him – but said there was independent evidence to support the shooter’s claims. Daniels is the only “top 10” high flyer arrested in October 2003 to have been denied bail.

Viljoen said it would be “reckless” to pursue a case based solely on the evidence of section 204 witnesses.

These are people already implicated in crimes who testify on the basis that they will be granted immunity from prosecution if the court declares their evidence to be truthful.

In three separate judgements last year, High Court justices Bennie Griesel, Jolyann Knoll and Andre Blignault acquitted alleged gang leaders Solomon, Cyster “Eier” Williams, Stevens and William Lindoor of murder.

Solomons and Stevens were named as the police’s “top catches” in their “High Flyer Project” in October 2003.

All three judges said they could not rely on the evidence of the section 204 witnesses as a basis for conviction.

Judge Griesel was asked to dismiss the murder cases against Solomons and Williams, in which they were accused of ordering state witnesses Saul Mars and Reuben Heyns to kill Solomon’s niece, Gwendoline Abrahams, 38, in January 1999.

Mars, who described himself as a gang “overseer”, testified that a “bunch” of people had been killed at his command.

While admitting he had supervised the killing of “eight to nine” people and supplied the guns used, he said he was a businessman and did not do “shooting work”.

Earlier last year, Mars testified against eight alleged 28s gang members, including Stevens, accused of the kidnapping and murder of 24-year-old Quinton Jonkers – whom Mars claimed he had watched being tied up and stabbed to death.

The case against the eight men was dismissed by Judge Knoll, who declined to grant Mars immunity from prosecution. However, to date Mars has not been put on trial for his role in any of the killings he admits ordering.

Several high flyers have taken legal action against police and prosecuting authorities for allegedly breaking a man’s jaw during a raid and persuading a vagrant to lay false charges against them.

Last September, alleged drug dealer Ishaam de Klerk was granted an urgent Cape High Court interdict against police and justice authorities, as well as specific police officers, preventing them from “unlawfully assaulting or threatening” any person occupying his Salt River homes, or damaging his property or furniture “unless properly authorised in law”.

This arose out of an incident on July 16 last year in which police allegedly broke down a wall to gain access to De Klerk’s home and broke the jaw of one Nazeem Goliath.

A subsequent Independent Complaints Commission report recommended four of the police involved in the July raid be charged with assault.

The Director of Public Prosecutions, Rodney de Kock, cautioned against dismissing the evidence of section 204 witnesses.

“The court must apply caution in examing the evidence of these witnesses, because they are usually accomplices in the crimes they are testifying about. Section 204 witnesses are therefore held to a higher standard of evidence. While the court may question the quality of the evidence provided by certain section 204 witnesses, that does not necessarily mean all section 204 evidence should be dismissed as suspect.”

This article was originally published on page 1 of Cape Argus on January 10, 2005

Source: Independent Online (IOL)
URL: http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click…/p>