One of the men accused of murdering top criminal lawyer Pete Mihalik has accused slain AGU detective Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear and his team of torturing him into making a confession.
The shocking statement was made by Nkosinati Khumalo at the Cape High Court on Monday as Mihalik’s murder trial resumed.
Khumalo, along with Sizwe Biyela and Vuyile Maliti, returned to court where Khumalo had been appointed a new legal representative amid objections to the admission of Kinnear’s statement into evidence.
As the court deliberated whether the matter would result in a trial-within-a-trial, Advocate Pieter Nel listed three occasions where his client claimed to have been assaulted.
He says on the day of the murder, Khumalo was taken to the police station in Green Point where he was moered by officers in private clothes.
He was allegedly beaten and a plastic packet put over his face in an attempt to suffocate him.
Nel says the suspect was then taken to Khayelitsha where he was beaten with a tree branch before taken to a house in the City Centre where he claimed Kinnear was present.
Kinnear allegedly watched as officers in “private clothes” filled a bath with water and placed Khumalo’s head under water.
Khumalo claims Kinnear then forced him to sign a statement of which he did not know the contents.
According to this statement, Khumalo told Kinnear he had come from Durban to drive taxis in Cape Town.
It states that he was confirmed to be the driver of one of the getaway cars, and that he admitted that he drove with Maliti to Sea Point and had been told that “there was a white man who had to be killed”.
Judge Noluthando Nziweni ruled that the matter came down to credibility and admitted Kinnears statement and Khumalo’s claims into the court record.