Why advocate in Meyiwa case was arrested
THE legal representative of accused 1 to 4 in the Senzo Meyiwa murder trial, advocate Malesela Teffo had been intimidated since the watching brief of Kelly Khumalo’s lawyer Magdalene Moonsamy was suspended.
This emerged yesterday during the proceedings which ended dramatically with the arrest of Teffo in the North Gauteng High Court, Pretoria.
As proceedings were set to resume after the lunch adjournment, the defence team said it had received threatening calls. The instructing attorney for Teffo told the court that since the watching brief was called off, he had been receiving threatening calls in the middle of the night. According to the attorney, someone had called the team and asked if they knew a certain judge, following which they hung up the call.
He said they received another call, however, in this instance, the person did not say anything and all he could hear was shuffling papers in the background.
A request was made for the matter to be adjourned as Teffo had allegedly been threatened and was in no state to continue with the cross-examination of the state witness. But as the matter ended for the day, Teffo was served with a warrant of arrest inside the courtroom and escorted out.
During the commotion, it was said Teffo was set to appear in a Johannesburg court today, but the charges thereof were not indicated at the time of his arrest.
Earlier, state prosecutor advocate George Baloyi raised an objection to the line of questioning by Teffo.
The State asked that the defence be curbed from asking state witness Sergeant Thabo Johannes Mosia hypothetical questions about the incident. Mosia took to the stand as one of the first forensic officers on scene on the night Meyiwa was shot on October 26, 2014, and who was responsible for collecting exhibits on the scene.
If anything, Baloyi said the defence should rather wait to pose questions such as the type of gun he believed was used, DNA results or if the scene had been tampered with, to the relevant witnesses which were still to appear before the court.
Baloyi said that while he had no problem with Mosia being cross-examined in so far as the correct procedures and what he had collected or done in line with his duties on the day of the incident, that was where his role ended.
Both defence teams agreed to submit their heads in response to the State’s issues at a later stage.
The matter will resume on May 30 and continue until June 15.