The Cape High Court on Tuesday denied four men convicted in the Fancy Boys gangster case leave to appeal.
Three Fancy Boys gang members, with sentences ranging from 10 to 20 years’ imprisonment, and a non-gangster who received stolen property from them had applied for leave to appeal against their convictions and sentences before Judge Anton Veldhuizen.
Shamiel Eyssen, Shahied Khan and Clive Adams were part of a housebreaking syndicate that targeted wealthy homes. They were convicted of management of a racketeering enterprise, racketeering itself, armed robbery and criminal membership of a gang.
The fourth man, Marwaan Alexander, wanted leave to appeal against his nine-year sentence for receiving stolen property, and the illegal possession of a firearm and ammunition.
Advocates for the convicted men told Veldhuizen the reliability of some of the trial witnesses and the process through which evidence was corroborated could be questioned.
Shahied Khan’s counsel, Pete Mihalik, said the court’s acceptance of the evidence of two witnesses meant his client had been incriminated by the ”say-so of two confessed robbers”.
Mihalik also criticised the court’s rejection of Khan’s alibi witness, saying the witness may have made errors because three years had passed between the events taking place and his testifying about them.
But Veldhuizen said that the defence teams had presented ”nothing new” and he therefore denied leave to appeal.
Mihalik told the court his client, Khan, would petition the chief justice for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein. Khan was granted bail of R20 000 pending the outcome of the petition.
The court was also told on Tuesday that the application for leave to appeal of a fifth convicted gang member, Munier Effendi, had been postponed indefinitely.
At a previous May 9 postponement of the applications for leave to appeal, Effendi’s advocate at the time, Paul van Zyl, told the court he had received a mysterious phone call from a woman wanting to testify on Effendi’s behalf.
On Tuesday, the court heard that Effendi had a new advocate, Salim Banderker.
Banderker told the South African Press Association that he had been appointed to the case on Monday and he would need a week to consult with Effendi and the mysterious woman and decide what to do. — Sapa