A state witness in the Senzo Meyiwa trial has linked one of the accused to a lawyer that he has denied, saying the lawyer represented the accused even before the football star’s murder case.
The Pretoria High Court has been hearing a trial within a trial into the admissibility of alleged confession statements by two of the accused.
The state believes the statements were made freely and voluntarily and should be admitted as evidence, while the defence insists the men were beaten and tortured to confess.
On the witness stand, this week has been one of the lead investigators in this case, Sergeant Vusumuzi Mogane.
The issue of Bongani Ntanzi’s lawyer has been in question since the state-led evidence that he was legally represented when he made a confession before a magistrate at the Boksburg Magistrates Court in June 2020.
While records show that Ntanzi’s lawyer at the time was a man called Dominic Mjiyako, Ntanzi claimed he was not legally represented and does not even know Mjiyako.
On Thursday, court documents from an illegal possession of ammunition case against Ntanzi showed that Mjiyako had represented Ntanzi in a different court from July 2020.
But the investigator who arrested Ntanzi and escorted him to make his confessions, Mogane, said their relationship goes further back than that.
“How did you establish the name of Mjiyakho?” Mogane was asked.
“I knew him [Mjiyakho] from Phokeng because from there he had been representing the accused,” answered Mogane.
The matter in Phokeng heard in the Tlhabane Magistrates Court was what Ntanzi was originally charged with before the murder of Senzo Meyiwa.
-EWN
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