'They should pay costs from their pockets'
Major-General Johan Booysen wants NDPP Shaun Abrahams and his team to pay his legal costs from their own pockets.
|||Durban - Suspended KwaZulu-Natal Hawks Head Major-General Johan Booysen is asking a court to order that National Director of Public Prosecutions (NDPP) Shaun Abrahams and his team pay from their own pockets the costs of his legal challenge to their “misdeeds” in again charging him with racketeering.
Booysen - and 17 of his 28 co-accused also charged with racketeering in the so-called Cato Manor “death squad” case - says he again has firm proof that the entire matter is premised on an abuse of power by Abrahams and his team.
In an affidavit filed in the Durban high court this week seeking to overturn the Abrahams decision to sign off on the racketeering charges, Booysen says senior advocates “lied and misrepresented” the case to Abrahams, who was either complicit or negligent.
“They should not be permitted to force the taxpayer to incur the costs of their misdeeds,” he said.
Booysen and the other officers were charged with 116 charges in 2012, the racketeering ones being authorised at that time by the then acting NDPP Nomgcobo Jiba.
Booysen challenged this in court and in 2014 Durban High Court Judge Trevor Gorven set aside Jiba’s authorisation, ruling there was no evidence before her to warrant it. All charges were withdrawn against him.
Soon after an internal disciplinary inquiry, chaired by Advocate Nazeer Cassim, also cleared him of any wrongdoing and went further, indicating he was a victim of politics.
In a timeline of events in his affidavit, Booysen points to the fact that soon after the resignation “with a golden handshake” of NDPP Mxolisi Nxasana - who refused to appeal the Gorven judgment - and the appointment of Abrahams, there were internal moves to re-instate the charges.
He said Abrahams had the same documents before him as Jiba, which Judge Gorven had ruled did not amount to any evidence of racketeering.
According to the record of his decision produced by Abrahams at Booysen’s request, the only new ones were affidavits containing “hearsay twiceremoved evidence” which did not implicate him or anyone else in any of the charges, and a prosecution memorandum and power point presentation “riddled with fiction, speculation and misinformation”.
Most startling, he said, was a reference to a YouTube documentary aired by television station Al Jazeera, but produced by local journalists “who have staked their professional reputation on their claim that I led a death squad”.
Booysen said Abrahams ignored an internal report compiled by two respected senior state advocates - which cast serious doubts on the case against him - in favour of a sensationalised documentary on social media which ignored that the Cato Manor squad was operating in an “extremely violent context”, investigating dangerous criminals.
He said Abrahams had also not taken the Cassim report into consideration. “He rubber-stamped the request without applying his mind. He has abused his power and his decision should be set aside.”
Abrahams will file a responding affidavit and the matter will be set down argument. The criminal trial has been set down in the Durban High Court, but cannot begin until this challenge has been decided.
The Mercury