State ignores Butterfly demands

The State has failed to respond to former Directorate of Intelligence and Security’s agent, Welheminah Mphoeng Maswabi’s demands to drop charges against her.

Maswabi, better known as Butterfly in the spy circles, had wanted her charges dropped barely days after the State announced it had engaged a South African private prosecutor, Gerri Nel to handle the matter.

She had written a demand letter to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions (DPP) through her attorneys, Mack Bahuma but the State is yet to respond to her despite elapsing of 14-day period in which it was supposed to have done so.

Maswabi is currently facing charges of possession of unexplained property and false declaration of a passport while the main charge of financing terrorism was dropped.

In a brief interview, her lawyer, Unoda Mack said the State as usual haven’t responded to their demands nor took time to respond to the letter.

He said the State hasn’t been doing much to progress the case hence the reason they demanded for the charges to be dropped.

“As usual the State failed to respond to our demands without any explanation. We want the charges dropped because there is not much to the case,” he said.

In the letter that was filed sometime back, Butterfly demanded that the State abandon the charges against her, as there was no basis to proffer such to begin with.

“The purpose of this letter is to demand that you unconditionally abandon the charges against me, as there was no basis to proffer such charges.

The decision to charge the accused person was not only irrational and illegal but outright malicious and it amounts to abuse of your prosecutorial mandate,” read the letter.

Butterfly’s attorneys, who have been demanding further particulars in order to prepare for her defence, have accused the prosecution of charging their client when there was no reasonable evidence to do so.

Mack said it was surprising that the State’s response to further particulars request was that the case was still under investigation and that the particulars requested would be provided upon completion of such probe.

He explained that in relation to the counts of possession of unexplained property and false declaration of passport faced by the accused, the effect was the State charged her with possession of assets or properties which she does not own or have control over and which were legitimately acquired by her.

Mack argued in the letter that the State further charged the accused person, in count two on the basis of documents, which they didn’t have in their possession.

“It was extremely frightening that the prosecution deliberately and consciously placed such false information before court. It is deeply troubling and baffling that you decided to charge the accused person with count of false declaration when you do not have the very document which forms the basis of such charge,” he said.

Mack also pointed out that the State charged the accused person for offences that it cannot substantiate as there is no evidence to support them. He also said the prosecution never had evidence to support the accusations as it was clear from the recently leaked audio tapes.

He said what came out clearly from the meeting as per the said audiotapes was that the Directorate on Corruption and Economic Crime (DCEC) never submitted any docket to DPP in relation to the charges and that there was never any basis to charge the accused, as no evidence existed.

Furthermore, Mack accused the prosecution unit of being illegally involved in the investigation against the accused person when they did not have such powers or mandate in law to do so.

“You do not have the powers or mandate or authority to investigate or undertake any investigations against anybody. Any purported investigation undertaken by you or officers in whatever form or shape is illegal,” he said. As he demanded the charges to be dropped, Mack argued that prosecution took part in the investigations and then placed false information before court against his client.

Lastly as per the demand letter, Mack indicated that if the demands were not heeded to, he would approach the High Court to have the decision to charge and maintain charges against his client reviewed and set aside.

Besides the demand letter, Maswabi also has a pending lawsuit against the State. She is suing the State for defamation and wants P30 million.

She is accusing the State of fabricating information against her through the DCEC investigators, which she said was malicious and defamatory to her

character.