Cato Manor cops case postponed
The matter against twenty-seven detectives from the now disbanded Durban Organised Crime Unit was postponed in the Durban High Court on Wednesday.
Judge Nomphumulelo Radebe adjourned the matter in a packed court room to March 30 to allow the detectives' lawyers time to analyse documents that had been supplied to them on Tuesday.
There was a heavy police presence outside court.
The accused face 116 charges, ranging from 28 murders to racketeering and defeating the ends of justice.
The group allegedly carried out paid hits in the KwaZulu-Natal taxi wars between 2008 and 2011.
They were arrested more than two years ago. Two of the accused detectives have since died.
Another two accused had resigned from the police for jobs in the private sector at the time of the arrests.
Their boss, Major General Johan Booysen, was in court to support his former colleagues.
He was cleared of racketeering charges in a high court hearing last year.
He was then cleared in an internal disciplinary hearing by Advocate Nazeer Cassim, SC, who said in his report that: "The facts demonstrate an agenda to get rid of Booysen because he was perceived (rightly so I may add) as a determined, professional, competent and tenacious policeman who would arduously strive to bring wrongdoers to book."
At the previous hearing of the 27 detectives Prosecutor Sello Maema, one of six advocates flown in from Pretoria for the brief hearing, told Judge Kate Pillay that the particulars the defence wanted involved between 7000 and 8000 pages.
It is these documents that the defence will have to analyse by March 30.
Since the amount of the foster care grants exceeded the damages agreed to be paid by the RAF, no compensation was paid.
Coughlan would argue in the Constitutional Court that the provision of the foster care grants by the state was in fulfilment of its constitutional obligations and so it could not be said that payment of damages for loss of support created double compensation.
The RAF would argue that the payment of the grants was directly linked to the death of the children's mother and so constituted double compensation which should be deducted.
(File photo: Gallo Images)