Andy Duffy
Two Western Cape police officers are likely to be charged for their role in arming vigilantes on the Cape Flats, putting the police on course for a potentially embarrassing and divisive court case.
The charges follow a sting operation last year in which police handed back a dud hand grenade to People Against Gangsterism and Drugs (Pagad), who used it in an attack on an alleged drug dealer. Both sides in the conflict used grenades from the same batch in attacks on the Cape Flats earlier this year.
Western Cape attorney general Frank Kahn sent his report on the incident to National Police Commissioner George Fivaz and provincial police chief Leon Wessels late last week.
Kahn declines to comment on his findings, but it is understood he has decided to prosecute. His decision could prove unnerving for the province’s police.
The court is likely to want to lift the lid on the licence granted police in their undercover work on the Cape Flats. Intelligence operatives say such sting operations are common in attempts to infiltrate the ranks of vigilantes and gangsters.
One of the officers, internal security unit Inspector Wymar O’Reilly, says he will use the court to tell his side of the story – and later issue a full public statement.
O’Reilly, who was promoted following the incident, is on leave, but has not been suspended. The Mail & Guardian was unable to confirm the identity of the other officer Kahn wants to pursue.A decision to prosecute will further divide rival police operations in the province.
Some police and intelligence officials were outraged when serious violent crime unit director Leonard Knipe went public on the hand-grenade incident last month.
Knipe declines to comment. But he previously dismissed the sting operation as “stupid”. His team found that O’Reilly confiscated and then returned the defused grenade to a police informer in Pagad.
Knipe said there was no attempt to trace the source of the confiscated grenade – which his team tracked down in two days.
The dud grenade failed to explode when it was used to attack an alleged drug dealer in Crawford. But a pregnant woman was killed in another attack where a grenade from the same batch was used. Knipe said there was no attempt to trace the source of the confiscated grenade – which his team tracked in two days.
Wessels’ office declined to comment this week.
But other police and intelligence officials believe Knipe knows little about intelligence work. They also question his motives for naming the informer.
The alleged informer, Rushdien Abrahams, says Knipe has a long-standing grudge against him. Knipe arrested Abrahams, a former member of the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, for his role in the 1985 Lincoln Tavern bombing, but Abrahams escaped. He was arrested late last year on unrelated attempted murder charges and is currently in Pollsmoor prison, waiting to stand trial. He denies he is an informer.