Nearly seven years after the assassination of steroid king Brian Wainstein the state is getting ready to release audio recordings of conversations between the men who allegedly plotted his murder.
This comes as Wainstein’s former bodyguard fingered various dik dinge including Mark Lifman, Jerome ‘Donkie’ Booysen and international fugitive Kishor ‘Kamal’ Naidoo as being behind the assassination.
In his testimony, the bodyguard even admitted to betraying his former boss by helping plan his murder and taking over the illegal steroid trade.
Taking the stand, the bodyguard explained that after he and his brother were arrested for Wainstein’s murder, he handed his cellphone over and said the content was downloaded by the Hawks.
He explained that he had downloaded a Call Recorder App amid calls from SARS and had kept the application on his phone.
State prosecutor, Advocate Mervyn Menigo, called for the court to interpose the witness so an officer from the Hawks could testify about the audio recordings but this was met by strong opposition from Advocate Amanda Nel who represents Booysen and Andre Naude.
Nel said they had difficulty opening the 48 encrypted files and labelled the audio as ‘evidence in evidence’.
‘We are definitely going to challenge the authenticity of the evidence,’ she said as she called for a trial-within-a-trial.
After submissions by other defence lawyers who said they were able to access the files, Menigo accused Nel of failing to go through the evidence which was submitted four years.
“This evidence was given in 2020 and I would have expected that the defence would have done due diligence and gone through it.”
Menigo said the state was not trying to ambush the defence teams and said should a trial-within-a-trial commence he welcomed the defence teams to raise their “frivolous reasons”.
Judge Vincent Saldanha also questioned why the defence lawyer had not gone through the evidence before hand, adding there was no basis for a trial-within-a-trial.
The case was postponed to Monday.