The Pretoria Specialised Commercial Crimes Court adjourned on Tuesday with no clear answer on how many files on accused Muziwendoda Kunene’s computer were related to the ”hoax email” saga.
Kunene, former spy boss Billy Masetlha and former National Intelligence Agency electronic surveillance manager Funokwakhe Madlala are facing fraud charges relating to alleged hoax emails implicating senior African National Congress members in a conspiracy against former deputy president Jacob Zuma.
Tuesday’s adjournment followed the cross-examination of state witness and computer expert Senior Superintendent Bernard Grobler.
Testifying on his second day, Grobler could not say how many files retrieved from Kunene’s Packard Bell laptop were related to the alleged emails.
”I won’t be able to do it … because it’s a large volume of documents. My forensic investigation was not based on the relevance of the emails, but was only based on keywords,” said Grobler. The keywords included names such as ”Phumzile”, ”Kunene” and ”Zuma”.
The court gave Grobler time until Wednesday morning to assess how many of the 7 000 files related to the case.
While giving evidence in Monday, Grobler told the court the laptop computer showed that the emails were viewed on a flash drive inserted into the computer. However, on Tuesday he said that the text of the emails could have come from elsewhere, and he could not say if they came from one device.
He also could not say which computer programme had been used to create the emails. There was no trace of the emails on the computer itself.
Among some of the documents that were not related to the case was a flight booking for Kunene.
Asked when the computer was first used, Grobler said that software was installed on the computer on August 25 2005 and it was last used on December 1 of the same year. He said it had been primarily used for document creation and was part of a home entertainment system. It had no passwords.
There was no dispute over Kunene being the owner of the computer. Said advocate Nazeer Cassim: ”Accused number one [Kunene] admits that it was his computer.”
The laptop formed part of evidence gathered in two sealed boxes. Among other items, the boxes also contained a Nokia cellphone and a Proline computer.
When asked how sure he was that nobody had tampered with the computer, the witness said all of the computer’s open spaces had been sealed with brown tape that had been signed to show that it had not been tampered with.
Magistrate Dawie Jacobs postponed the case to Wednesday. Kunene would be taken to the Moot police station, while Masetlha and Madlala’s bail was extended. — Sapa