Pakistanis’ killers to know their fate today

Battling to hold back tears, he said “he was more like a son than a brother”

A PAKISTANI man has testified about the “devastation” his family has experienced since his younger brother and nephew were murdered at his home in Mitchells Plain.

He was testifying in the Western Cape High Court before Judge Burton Fourie.

Abid Hussein was running a bread distribution business from his home in Rocklands and lived there with his 22year-old brother, his 23-yearold nephew and two close friends when the attack happened in March 2013.

Hussein was visiting Pakistan at the time.

Lehano Jansen and his co-accused, Moegamat Nasief de Villiers and Yazeed Hendricks stormed the home on March 19, believing there was between R60 000 and R100 000 in the safe.

Ghulam Baqar, Adnan Haider, Shazad Ahmad and Muhamed Shafique were all shot dead and the money stolen from the safe amounted to just R37.

Fourie found Jansen guilty on 18 charges. He had pleaded guilty to seven charges, including attempted murder and a hijacking that he committed the day before the murders.

The car he stole was used as the getaway car in the Rocklands killings.

Jansen was found guilty on a further seven counts, including murder and robbery.

His co-accused, Hendricks, was found guilty on seven charges, also including murder and robbery.

The third accused, Nasief de Villiers, was found guilty of armed robbery and two counts of the illegal possession of a firearm.

Earlier yesterday, an emotional Hussein, speaking through an Urdu interpreter, told the court that Baqar had moved to Cape Town from Pakistan and worked for him selling bread in the family business. Battling to hold back tears, he said “he was more like a son than a brother to me”.

Hussein said they supported their parents financially in Pakistan as well as their siblings, who were still attending school.

His nephew, Haider, followed Baqar to South Africa to work in the family business as well, and was employed as the driver.

Hussein testifed that Ahmed, another of the four victims, had been his close friend for 10 years and ran a tuck shop from the house.

He told the court that Ahmed, an only child, also supported his parents in Pakistan. When his mother received the news that her only son had died, “she cried so much she couldn’t see anymore”, he said.

He described the fourth victim, Shafique, as a “brother” who worked as a car mechanic and had six children.

Since his murder the children had been surviving on handouts.

Describing his own family’s pain in Pakistan, he said: “This thing that happened to us is just devastating, we don’t know what to do anymore.”

His brother Baqar was the only one to have finished college and the family – who lived in a rural village in Pakistan – had pinned their hopes on him.

Judge Fourie is expected to hand down sentence today.