Cops wys of Donkie and brasse's Sabela

Coded language used to conceal alleged drug transactions by alleged Sexy Boys gang boss, Jerome 'Donkie' Booysen and his cronies took centre stage at the Western Cape High Court yesterday. 

Booysen and several others returned to court as a former Hawks detective outlined the details of how cops discovered 38 alleged incriminating calls they say is linked to the murder trial of slain steroid king Brian Wainstein. 

Booysen and several others face a plethora of charges linked to the death of Wainstein and violent clashes in the nightclub security industry, dating back nearly 10 years ago. 

The murder case was plunged into a trial-within-a-trial last year as the State sought to introduce evidence obtained from the intercepted calls in a different matter, relating to an investigation into a drug syndicate the prosecution alleges was run by Booysen and several others. 

It is understood that as investigators obtained permission to intercept the calls of the drug syndicate, they uncovered information linked to the Wainstein murder. 

Returning to the witness stand, the detective told the court of his discoveries. 

He explained that the team received over 800 recorded calls which needed to be analysed to see for any evidentiary value. 

He says while he initially transcribed some of the calls, the call records were also sent to a private transcribers firm as these notes would be used as evidence in court. 

The detective told the court that while he was satisfied with these transcriptions problems arose when the targets used coded language, which he dubbed as ‘dwelm taal’ or Sabela. 

He explained: "Someone would say bring vir my drie brode and that would cost R30 000. The transcribers would say its inaudible because it made no sense that you would pay R30 000 for three breads. But in dwelm taal, we know that a bread is 1000 pills and a halwe brood is 500 pills." 

He also told the court that while slain Mark Lifman was not a suspect in the drug syndicate, they did recover calls linked to other matters being investigated by the Hawks at the time, including corruption charges. 

The trial continues