State denies key witness in gang killing let down
THE Directorate of Public Prosecutions in Port Elizabeth has denied that a state witness to a 2009 gang shooting, Pastor Brendon Olivier, and his family had been failed by the justice system.
Olivier’s testimony played a vital role in the murder conviction of Jermaine Baadjies, 28, who gunned down Angelo “Dakota” Hendricks, 27, in Helenvale in 2009.
He has claimed that he was pressured under false pretences to testify against Baadjies.
Olivier, 47, also claims the justice system failed to assist him and his family to get their lives back to normal and that they had simply been discarded by the system after the state had secured its conviction.
The family have been on the run for the past eight years and, according to Olivier, have been living without any income in a government-allocated prefabricated home, which has no essential services such as water and a toilet, for the past three years.
The deputy director of public prosecutions in Port Elizabeth, Advocate Indra Goberdan, has rejected Olivier’s claims.
“During the investigation and trial ... both the prosecutor and the investigating officer recommended that Pastor Olivier be placed in the witness protection programme,” she said. “A meeting was held with Pastor Olivier to provide a detailed explanation of the workings of the programme as well as the strict rules that must be adhered to in order to ensure his safety.
“Pastor Olivier then signed a temporary agreement on October 17 2012, wherein he indicated he would only require to be in the programme for the times that he was a witness [at court].
“His words were: ‘I don’t want to be fully on it because it binds my freedom of movement and communications. I need to communicate and move to people’.
“Pastor Olivier signed an affidavit wherein he reflected inter alia that he refused to comply with the strict rules of the witness protection programme and therefore refused to be admitted on to the programme.”
Goberdan said that while the court had denied an application by Olivier to testify in camera, at no stage during his testimony did he indicate that he was threatened.
When contacted yesterday, Olivier stuck to his guns and rubbished Goberdan’s version of the events. “Those are pure lies,” he said. “I refused to testify in the case many times, even up until the morning of the court case when I testified.
“When they [witness protection] first approached me, I put three questions to them which was what would happen to my monthly income, who would pay for my house and what would happen to us after I testified?
“I was told they would not assist me with any of these things and would only pay me R800 a month for the period when I testified.
“So I refused to testify as I would have lost everything.
“Why then, just before they wanted me to testify, was I suddenly informed by Bhisho, via a cellphone at the court, that they would meet all my requirements if I testified.
“I then testified in good faith and, of course, none of my requirements were met and our lives have now been destroyed,” he said.