Cape Town - “He should have known harm would come to Colonel Kinnear.”
This is the opinion of a top Hawks detective assigned to investigate the murder of slain Anti-Gang Unit detective Charl Kinnear, the Western Cape High Court heard yesterday.
After weeks on the stand, Captain Edward du Plessis appeared determined while coming under cross-examination by defence teams in the mammoth underworld trial of alleged kingpin Nafiz Modack and several others.
The group has been slapped with over 100 charges for various criminal cases centred on the death of Kinnear, who was assassinated outside his Bishop Lavis home on September 18, 2020.
Du Plessis, who spent weeks revealing how Kinnear and others including lawyer William Booth were tracked, allegedly by Modack’s co -accused Zane Kilian, told the court that after his appointment to the National Task Team, he received a threatening call informing him of a R1 million bounty on his head.
He explained that after being brought to Cape Town and while working at the Hawks’ office in Bellville, he received a call from a private number.
Cellphone records were subpoenaed from Vodacom and cops later charged Modack’s co-accused, Petrus Visser, with intimidation. Visser has since denied placing the call.
Responding to questions posed by Kilian’s lawyer, advocate Pieter Nel, Du Plessis told the court that he did not believe Kilian’s version that he did not know what was being done with the ping information.
He revealed that when analysing the pings done by Kilian, it was found that 72% of the pings carried out by Kilian were done for Modack.
The adamant detective told the court that after the botched hit on Booth at his Higgovale home before the murder of Kinnear, he believed Kilian should have known Kinnear was under threat. “He should have known harm would come to Colonel Kinnear,” Du Plessis said.
Du Plessis said the shooter who killed Kinnear must have obtained the information from Modack and openly claimed that Kinnear was not being tracked to gauge where he would effect arrests, but instead that most pings done were to ascertain when Kinnear would be arriving home.
While Modack’s lawyer, advocate Bash Sibda, objected saying Du Plessis was stating allegations as fact, the detective hit back saying Kilian stated himself so under oath during his bail hearings.
Modack’s co-accused, Amaal Jantjies, also denied any guilt on the money-laundering charges after bank records showed that she had received R64000 from the Empire Investment bank account.
In her version she worked for an attorney known as Karriem Abdul and claims the payments to her account were for client fees that she was instructed to receive in her personal bank account.