The unit was a death squad, says insider

A FORMER confidant of KwaZulu-Natal Hawks boss Johan Booysen who has turned whistleblower holds the key to unravelling how the Cato Manor unit functioned.

Ari Danikas met Booysen in 1998. Within a year Booysen had persuaded Danikas, who hails from a family of policemen in Greece, to join the reservists under his direct command.

Booysen often took him along on high-profile cases, jumping in a chopper with him or racing together to a crime scene.

The two became close family friends. This gave Danikas an unique insight into Booysen’s character, including his attitude towards black South Africans. “I remember his exact words: ‘They are killing whites. They’re destroying this country. And we have to do something about it.’ ”

A turning point for Danikas came in 2004. He says he took a video of Booysen’s squad torturing a suspect in the Cato Manor offices. The blurry mobile footage shows a terrified naked suspect being humiliated, beaten and suffocated.

When Danikas showed Booysen the video, “he told me that’s how we get confessions. We get the job done. That was always the case. We get the job done.”

In April 2007, Booysen and his mistress, Captain Adele Sonnekus, were having drinks at Danikas’s house when Booysen got a call.

“There’s this big shootout and there’s a problem,” recalls Danikas. “We get in the cars, police sirens, and we drive to the crime scene.”

Seconds after arriving, Danikas took photographs of the scene. Photos he took 16 minutes later show the body of a suspect had been moved.

Danikas filmed another suspect who was dying while Sonnekus, Booysen and some of the Cato Manor men stood around “making jokes in Afrikaans”.

“They were basically waiting for him to die,” says Danikas.

Danikas claims the men who were shot were lured into a trap with the help of a Cato Manor informer. He says he was told to pick up spent police cartridges to disguise what he believes was an execution.

“They were at the mercy of the team. And they just shot them dead,” he says. “The unit was a death squad.”

It was easy to disguise executions by planting weapons, he says. “It was standard proce-

OFF DUTY: Johan Booysen and Ari Danikas relaxing together dure for every member of the Cato Manor unit. And they could get away with murder.”

Today, as evidence of their involvement in suspect shootings mounts, Booysen is at pains to point out the squad wasn’t under his control. Yet sworn statements show he was informed of fatal shootings and made media statements before the squad’s operational commander knew about them.

Danikas says Booysen was always phoned first after a killing, often in his presence, and afterwards helped to cover up the use of excessive force.

In 2008, their relationship deteriorated and Danikas began to fear for his life. On September 25 2008, he fled to Greece with his wife. In 2013, Booysen told the Sunday Times he denied all Danikas’s allegations “in the strongest possible terms”.

Danikas has been approached by senior investigators convinced he will make a strong witness against Booysen and the Cato Manor members, but he refuses to return to South Africa, fearing he will be killed. “Booysen’s favourite saying was ‘I can make people disappear’,” says Danikas.

Booysen and Sonnekus declined to be interviewed.

DEATH TOLL: Another suspect shooting by the unit