Pretoria - Former top police officer Lieutenant-Colonel Lesley “Cowboy” Maluleke is facing 15 charges in the Gauteng High Court, Pretoria, relating to the 2010 rendition of several Zimbabweans.
The trial, which took years to get off the ground and has a long history of litigation, eventually started a month ago, and was set down until Friday.
Prosecutor George Baloyi yesterday told Judge Hennie de Vos that the trial would be postponed at the end of this week to later in the year, as it was taking longer than had been foreseen.
Baloyi indicated that the prosecution would need at least another month in which to call the rest of their witnesses, before the defence team could start presenting its case.
Judge de Vos expressed his concerns about the slow pace at which the trial was moving and remarked to the prosecution that after a month, it was not even halfway through calling its witnesses.
Baloyi indicated that some of the evidence still to come involved extradition procedures as well as the evidence of Zimbabwean home affairs officials.
Maluleke is the only one on trial after charges were earlier dropped against former Hawks head Anwa Dramat and erstwhile Gauteng Hawks head Shadrack Sibiya.
Maluleke pleaded not guilty to all the charges, which include kidnapping, defeating the ends of justice and contraventions of the Immigration Act. The charges follow the rendition of several Zimbabweans in 2010 and 2011 to their place of birth.
They were wanted for the alleged murder of a top cop in Zimbabwe – a Chief Superintendent Chatikobo – who was killed in September 2010.
According to the indictment, the victims in the kidnapping charges which Maluleke is facing fled to South Africa and sought refuge in Diepsloot.
The Zimbabwean police enlisted the help of the Hawks and it is claimed that a delegation of about eight officers from Zimbabwe met Maluleke at the Hawks’ offices in Silverton, Pretoria, on November 4, 2010.
There was an amnesty for undocumented Zimbabweans at the time, which allowed Zimbabweans to apply for legal documents while in South Africa, without being deported.
It is claimed that Maluleke illegally arranged with the Zimbabwean police to trace, arrest and deport the seven.
There were allegedly two operations to find the suspects and to deport them. It is claimed that Maluleke himself was part of the delegation which allegedly kidnapped some of the suspects and drove across the Beitbridge border post, where they were handed over to the Zimbabwean police. Some of the suspects handed to the Zimbabwean police later died in custody.
Former Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) head Robert McBride earlier described the controversial rendition as a “conspiracy”.
It saw him being wrongly suspended for a while by then police minister Nathi Nhleko. Sibiya and Dramat, whose names are also mentioned in the indictment, managed to have charges against themselves dropped.
It is said in the preamble to the summary of facts in the case against Maluleke that the pair were part of a delegation who met high-ranking Zimbabwe law-enforcement officials in August 2010.
The prosecution called its eighth witness yesterday, a computer expert who gave technical evidence relating to a device belonging to Maluleke.
Pretoria News