A police officer probing alleged sex crimes against Pretoria advocate pair Cezanne Visser and Dirk Prinsloo was accused on Thursday of having a grudge against Prinsloo after he laid a complaint against her.
Piet Coetzee, for Prinsloo, told the Pretoria High Court his client had laid a complaint against Superintendent Daleen du Plessis long before his arrest, which resulted in departmental charges being brought against her.
The complaint apparently related to an altercation they had when Prinsloo was not satisfied with the outcome of investigations into criminal charges he had registered at the police station where Du Plessis headed the detective unit.
Coetzee said his client will testify that Du Plessis had begged Prinsloo to withdraw the complaint as it had hampered her promotion for more than two years. She denied this under cross-examination.
Coetzee accused Du Plessis of reopening an attempted murder investigation against Prinsloo out of spite.
”It is not true,” she said. ”It was my duty.”
Coetzee also accused her of holding back the investigation so that his client would be arrested over the December holidays, and of employing task force members to arrest him for ”maximum sensation”.
He furthermore insinuated that she had planned to arrest the two at a gymnasium they attended to ensure they were publicly humiliated.
The couple was arrested at their Raslouw, Pretoria, home on December 19 2002.
They face 16 charges related to alleged sexual violations of women and girls — including two counts of rape.
The attempted murder charge against Prinsloo was initially withdrawn because the complainant, an alleged burglar he apparently shot, could not be traced.
The investigation was reopened on Du Plessis’s instruction, and the count was added to the charge sheet when the couple appeared before the Pretoria Magistrate’s Court in the current matter.
The case was thrown out of court in July 2003, when the magistrate refused a further postponement.
The couple was arrested a few days later, the charge sheet reformulated and the matter eventually referred to the high court. This time, the attempted murder was not included on the charge sheet.
Prosecutor Andre Fourie said on Thursday that a decision was taken to prosecute the attempted murder charge separately in the regional court. The matter is still pending, he said.
In the morning, police who searched the couple’s house on the day of the arrest were accused by the defence of planting evidence at the scene.
Gerhard Botha questioned Senior Superintendent Rudi van Olst, who commanded the search-and-seizure operation, about police members roaming freely around the house.
Van Olst conceded that by the time he arrived at the house police had already been in several rooms.
Asked by Botha, for Visser, whether it was possible police could have contaminated the scene, he said: ”If somebody wanted to, it was a possibility.”
Botha said evidence would be led that certain items found in the house were not put there by his client.
”The only inference that can be made is that it must have been planted,” he told the court.
Cross-examining Van Olst, defence lawyers again argued their clients’ constitutional rights had been violated during the search and seizure and arrest.
Coetzee claimed police had handcuffed his client to stop him from speaking to lawyers on the phone.
He also intimated that a key to the couple’s safe, which went missing during the search, could only have been taken by police.
The trial continues on Friday. — Sapa