One of the 11 men accused of hijacking cigarette trucks became ”very religious” after a shooting incident that turned him into a paraplegic, a former member of the hijacking gang told the Cape High Court on Wednesday.
Vernon Aspeling, who has turned state witness, said the paraplegic, Selwyn de Vries, had a Bible on his lap during a trip to Cape Town.
Aspeling said: ”I told him he’s serving two masters — God and the devil. I said he had to make a choice between God and the devil because he was busy with the devil’s work.”
With De Vries in the dock are his brother Virgil and nine co-accused charged with seven counts of kidnapping, six of theft, four of armed robbery, three of money laundering, two of racketeering, two of attempted murder and two related to the illegal possession of a gun and ammunition.
Aspeling, a Gauteng trucker, has given the court a detailed account of the alleged hijacking of cigarette-laden vehicles of British American Tobacco at Rawsonville, Darling and Port Elizabeth.
In Wednesday’s proceedings before Judge Lee Bozalek, Aspeling was under cross-examination for the third day by De Vries’s advocate, Peter Mihalik.
Asked if he ”left town” after hearing about the arrest of some of the suspects, he said he spent half the day with a family member and the other half with a friend. He also spent a few days with another family member.
”Were you on the run?” asked Mihalik.
”If so, yes, I was on the run,” Aspeling said.
He said he did not think of handing himself over to the police because he first thought he had gotten away with his role in the hijackings.
He agreed that only after he was given the opportunity to be a state witness instead of an accused did he tell the whole story.
Mihalik: ”You told the whole story not to come clean but so as not to be compromised?”
Aspeling: ”I took my chances up the day of my arrest.”
Questioned further about his decision to become a state witness, he said: ”I thought I was being offered a second chance — it was an opportunity.”
Aspeling said his arrest was in connection with the Darling hijacking only, as the police were at that stage not sure that he was involved in the Rawsonville and Port Elizabeth incidents.
Asked if the state has paid him as a witness under protection, he said: ”Yes, but very little.”
The hearing continues on Thursday. — Sapa