Africa-Press – South-Africa. One of the men on trial for the murder of Cape Town lawyer Pete Mihalik claims Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) detective Charl Kinnear, who has since been killed, scammed him into signing a blank page before incriminating admissions were added.
“I would say that [he] scammed me,” said self-described second-hand jewellery and Kruger Rand dealer Sizwe Biyela.
He was testifying in his Western Cape High Court trial where he, his cousin Nkosinathi Khumalo, and a third accused, Vuyile Maliti, are accused of the murder of Mihalik and the attempted murder of his two children on 30 October 2018.
They deny all the charges and on Thursday, Biyela was the second of the accused who claimed Kinnear had made up a statement in which the accused confessed to being the shooter.
Biyela said that after his arrest on the day of the murder, Kinnear got him to sign blank pages to which he had to add his thumbprint.
State advocate Greg Wolmarans presented a list of potential scenarios which could have made him sign a blank document and asked whether he had been threatened or assaulted.
“He never threatened me. He never assaulted me,” Biyela said through an interpreter. At one point he was asked to mimic Kinnear’s tone when he was asked to sign.
Kinnear was murdered on 18 September 2020.
Khumalo was the first to be arrested in a situation that involved skipping a stop street and fleeing before the fine could be completed. He walked back to get the fine, claiming the driver of the vehicle was the one who sped off.
When CCTV footage and possible car registration numbers came in, he became a person of interest at the buzzing Sea Point police station, which had joined a massive search for the killers.
While being questioned, his phone rang incessantly, and the initial policeman dealing with him saw the name Biyela on his phone. By the end of the day Biyela was traced to Bellville. Kinnear and his AGU colleague, Sergeant Leatitia van der Horst, arrested Biyela as he was about to board a bus back to Umlazi in Durban.
Khumalo has already alleged that Kinnear and a group of police officers tortured a false admission statement out of him.
Biyela said that when he was with Kinnear, he told the detective that he would not say anything and that he wanted to speak to his lawyer.
He said on Wednesday he was also not allowed to call anyone and that the first time he had spoken to a lawyer was when he appeared in court for the first time on 2 November. The Legal Aid lawyer on duty took his case.
However, he said he obeyed Kinnear when Kinnear asked him to sign the blank statement.
“According to my knowledge, I knew that if he says I must sign these papers, I need to sign these papers,” he said.
The document contains admissions in a question-and-answer format in Kinnear’s handwriting.
Biyela denies the allegations levelled at him, and denies making the admissions in the document.
Police officers sat on either side of him in the witness box as he testified on Thursday.
One question in the document was: “How many shots did you shoot at the white man?” And the answer was “two”.
He insisted that he, Khumalo and Maliti were only together on that day, as shown by cellphone location data, because they were busy with a Kruger Rand deal in their car.
The court heard on Wednesday that he had travelled to Cape Town from Umlazi on an Intercape bus with 11 gold coins in his luggage that he, Khumalo and Maliti were going to sell for R200 000.
Wolmarans found it incredulous that an adult father of three who runs his own business selling Kruger Rands and jewellery, would sign and put his thumbprint on blank pages.
After Kinnear was shot dead, the investigation into Mihalik’s murder did not stop. Officers who worked with him on the investigation during the crucial early hours vouched for him and the statements on the Mihalik murder investigation in court.
However, the accused’s lawyers have pointed to discrepancies between the original versions and copies handed in to the court, as well as some incorrect dates.
The trial continues.
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