Top cop to face music

The chickens are coming home to roost for a former top cop and his one-time team, who are scheduled to appear in court next week on charges related to their alleged torture of suspects some 14 years ago.

Independent Police Investigative Directorate’s (Ipid) spokesperson Ndileka Cola (Ipid) yesterday confirmed the accused were due in the Johannesburg Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday.

The Citizen understands the charges against them include kidnapping and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm. They are also believed to be facing charges of extortion, as a result of which they cannot be named until they have tendered pleas.

The charges emanate from their alleged treatment of three suspects who had been implicated in a multi-million-rand heist at the Benoni police station in 2006, which saw R14 million swiped from the evidence store.

As part of a national task team set up by Gauteng’s then deputy provincial commissioner, Richard Mdluli, to investigate the case, they allegedly used apartheid-era interrogation methods – including waterboarding, tubing and electric shocks – to coerce statements out of the suspects.

Mdluli was, himself, this week sentenced to five years in prison for kidnapping, assault and assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm.

In 1999, Mdluli abducted his former lover, Tshidi Buthelezi, and a man named Oupa Ramogibe – with whom Buthelezi had become entangled in an affair – and dragged the pair to a police station where he beat them up.

Ipid first confirmed it was pursuing criminal charges against the officers set to appear in court next week, back in 2018.

The directorate said at the time most of the suspects in the case they had been investigating had “ended up dead or disappeared”.

Had the crimes the officers stood accused of been committed after the enactment of the Prevention and Combatting of Torture of Person Act in 2013, they would have been charged with torture.

The group has been involved in a number of controversial and politically tainted cases over the years, including:

• The fraud case brought against former National Prosecuting Authority prosecutor Gerrie Nel in 2008.
• The racketeering case brought against then head of the Hawks in KwaZulu-Natal Major-General Johan Booysen in 2012.
• The fraud, racketeering and corruption case brought against forensic investigator Paul O’Sullivan and his assistant Sarah-Jane Trent in 2017.

All have since been dropped.

The group was also in 2018 accused of trying to intimidate Ipid investigators investigating corruption and fraud charges involving former acting police commissioner Khomotso Phahlane.

– bernadettew@citizen.co.za

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