Stolen equipment delays trial
2010-07-29 12:33
Johannesburg - The equipment stolen from the South Gauteng High Court on Thursday belonged to a company recording the Brett Kebble murder trial for the attorneys of John Stratton, business partner of the slain mining magnate.
Malcolm Dee, the man doing the recording for Webber Wentzel attorneys, worked for a company called Real Time Transcriptions.
He said the recordings of the trial proceedings were sent to the attorneys on a daily basis, so no information was lost as a result of the theft.
According to the State's indictment, Stratton, who is currently living in Australia, and Kebble murder accused Glenn Agliotti had a number of meetings with Kebble's head of security, Clinton Nassif, to "eliminate" people "causing problems" for Kebble.
Stratton and Agliotti allegedly asked Nassif to arrange Kebble's "assisted suicide". Extradition processes were reportedly underway to get Stratton back to South Africa to stand trial.
Witnesses
Proceedings were to resume at 11:30 to give the police time to take fingerprints from Court 4C.
The prosecution, led by Gauteng deputy director of public prosecutions, Dan Dakana, was silent on who their sixth witness would be. Nassif was sitting in the witness room outside the courtroom.
Agliotti was in court wearing a pin-striped suit, white shirt and powder blue tie. He is facing four charges.
The first is conspiracy to commit the murders of Mark Bristow, Jean Daniel Nortier, Mark Wellesley-Woods and Stephen Mildenhall. The second is the attempted murder of Mildenhall.
The last two are conspiracy to murder Kebble and Kebble's murder.
Kebble was shot in his Mercedes-Benz in Melrose, north of Johannesburg in September 2005.
Detailed accounts of the shooting were given by the three men responsible for the "assisted suicide". The three, Michael Schultz, Nigel McGurk and Faizel Smith, were Section 204 witnesses for the State.
According to Section 204 of the Criminal Procedure Act, a witness may be granted full indemnity on a charge should he testify for the State and the court deems this testimony to be honest and frank.
- SAPA