One of Najwa Petersen’s co-accused told the Cape High Court on Wednesday that she and her family made repeated attempts to persuade him not to incriminate her in the murder of her husband, Taliep.
The claim came from Waheed Hassen at the end of a day in which he dramatically demonstrated to the court how Najwa allegedly fired the shot that killed Taliep in December 2006.
Hassen told Judge Siraj Desai that since he was first taken into custody, Najwa had been trying to get him to ”talk her out of the case”.
She made two approaches in the Wynberg Magistrate’s Court cells, once through a convict, and the second time directly to him.
Hassen said the man from whom he borrowed the gun used to kill Taliep, Sedick Kriel, had also been told that Najwa’s brother, Waleed Dirk, wanted to know how much money it would take for Hassen not to incriminate his sister.
He had reported the approaches to the police. Hassen, who is accused number three in the trial, took the stand on Wednesday morning to confess his role in the December 2006 slaying — and to implicate Najwa.
Though his version of events was already known to the court through extensive written statements to police, this was the first time he had spoken in a public arena about the killing.
Hassen said Fahiem Hendricks, an acquaintance of Najwa’s who has turned state witness, told him an ”old friend of his” was having problems with her husband and wanted him dead.
The husband beat her, cheated on her and got on her nerves, he said.
Hendricks had said the woman — who turned out to be Najwa — would let Hassen into the Petersen’s Athlone home, and that the murder had to look like an armed robbery gone wrong.
The woman allegedly offered R70 000 for the killing, which was raised to R100 000 when Hassen protested it was not enough to pay legal bills if things went wrong.
Hassen, who several times during his testimony battled to control his emotions, said that although he agreed to do the job, he had intended only to beat the husband to teach him a lesson.
On the night of December 16 2006, he and co-accused Jefferson Snyders went to the Grasmere Street home and bound Taliep with cable ties. Najwa came out of a bedroom and first tried to embrace Taliep — which Taliep rejected with a head butt — then held his cheeks and kissed him, Hassen said.
”He was crying. He was crying like a person who is crying inside,” Hassen said.
As Hassen went round the house collecting items of value to make it look like a robbery, Najwa kept demanding that he finish the job.
”You must shoot him. You must shoot him tonight,” she allegedly told him.
”I thought the woman was desperate that the man be killed because she asked me repeatedly to do it,” he said.
Hassen said he fetched a flat upholstery cushion from a cupboard, and folded it over the borrowed gun.
With props — a green cushion that he said was similar to the one used on the night, a police-issue 9mm Parabellum and a court orderly acting the role of Najwa — he showed the court how Najwa allegedly reached over his left arm and pulled the trigger.
He was looking away at the time, he said.
After the shot he panicked, locked Najwa in a bedroom, and left.
”I did not know where the bullet hit the deceased and if he was dead or alive,” he said.
It is common cause that Taliep was killed by a shot to the back of the neck.
Hassen said that driving away from the scene of the killing with Snyders, he extracted the spent cartridge from the gun, where it had become jammed, and chewed on it before spitting it out into the roadside darkness.
”I was frustrated, because I did not go there with the intention that anyone should be killed,” he said. — Sapa