Defence to challenge authenticity of recording in ‘underworld’ murder trial
|Published
Cape Town - Nearly seven years after the assassination of “Steroid King” Brian Wainstein, the State is preparing to release audio recordings of conversations between those who allegedly plotted his murder.
This comes amid testimony in the Western Cape High Court by his former bodyguard who has fingered various suspects including Mark Lifman, Jerome “Donkie” Booysen and international fugitive Kishor “Kamal” Naidoo as being behind the hit.
In his testimony in the murder trial of the alleged underworld accused, the witness told the court in detail of meetings and calls where the plans to murder Wainstein were discussed, and admitted to betraying his former boss by helping to plan his murder. He later took over the steroid trade, but failed.
Issues regarding the audio recordings saw legal teams go headto-head amid contentions that the authenticity of the recordings would be challenged.
Taking the stand, the bodyguard testified that after he was arrested alongside his brother for Wainstein’s murder, he handed his cellphone over and said the content was downloaded by the Hawks.
He also told the court he had downloaded a Call Recorder App amid calls from the SA Revenue Service (Sars) and had kept the application on his phone.
State prosecutor, advocate Mervyn Menigo, called for the court to interpose the witness so that an officer from the Hawks could testify about the audio recordings, but this was met by strong opposition from advocate Amanda Nel, who represents Booysen and Andre Naude.
Nel told the court they had had difficulty in opening the 48 encrypted files and labelled the audio as “evidence in evidence”.
“We are definitely going to challenge the authenticity of the evidence,” she said as she called for a trial-within-a-trial.
After submissions by other defence lawyers who said they were able to access the files, Menigo accused Nel of failing to go through the evidence for four years.
“This evidence was given in 2020 and I would have expected that the defence would have done due diligence and gone through it.”
Menigo said the State was not trying to ambush the defence teams with evidence, and said should a trialwithin-a-trial commence, he would welcome the defence teams raising their frivolous reasons.
The State would highlight the names of the accused in each call to assist the defence teams before the evidence was presented, he said.
Judge Vincent Saldanha questioned why the defence lawyer had not gone through the evidence beforehand, saying there was no basis for a trialwithin-a-trial.
The case was postponed to Monday.
mahira.duval@inl.co.za
Cape Argus