Prosecutors call on court to link attacks in acquittal bid

The State yesterday hit back at the call by alleged underworld kingpin Nafiz Modack to acquit him of the murder of Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear.

After several days of hearings at the Western Cape High Court, the State has called on Judge Robert Henney to consider the patterns of behaviour and striking similarities between the murder of Kinnear and the attempted murder of criminal attorney William Booth.

Modack along with 14 others are facing over 100 counts in the mammoth underworld trial centred on the murder of Kinnear.

After an entire year, the State finally closed its case. This week, defence teams and State prosecutors went head-to-head in the 174 applications.

Addressing the court on Monday, Advocate Bash Sibda claimed Modack should be acquitted of Kinnear’s murder saying there was no proof that the pinging of Kinnear’s phone had led to his murder.

In August last year, Captain Edward du Plessis conceded that the Hawks were never able to find the killer.

But Sibda said there there was no evidence that the shooter used pinging information to execute the hit.

In an extensive response, State prosecutor, Advocate Greg Wolmarans told the court that the tracking of Booth and Kinnear needed to be considered before a decision could be made.

Wolmarans explained that in both incidents the victims’ cellphones were pinged by Modack’s co-accused Zane Kilian made use of the MarisIT system to conduct consumer trace reports on both Booth and Kinnear to ascertain their personal details.

He argued that the evidence shown by the State proved that Kilian excessively pinged both targets on the exact dates they were attacked and said the merits of each case could not be assessed in isolation of each other.

Wolmarans highlighted a call between Kilian and Modack’s alleged middleman, Ziyaad Poole, after the murder saying: “The call is placed and he is told to delete the information as the police are hot on the trail.”

“No one should be leaving this party,” he exclaimed as he called on Henney to dismiss the applications by Modack and his co-accused.

Henney is set to make a ruling on Monday.