With a cushion folded over a gun, one of Najwa Petersen’s co-accused on Wednesday showed the Cape High Court how she allegedly fired the shot that killed her bound and bloody husband, Taliep.
Waheed Hassen, 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 Hassen’s version of events was already known to the court through his extensive written statements to police, which have been admitted as evidence, this was the first time he had spoken in a public arena about the killing.
Though he has not formally changed his plea, he has indicated to the court that he wants to plead guilty.
He told Judge Siraj Desai that Fahiem Hendricks, an acquaintance of Najwa’s who has turned state witness, told him that an ”old friend of his” was having problems with her husband and wanted him dead. The husband beat her, cheated on her and worked on her nerves, he said.
Hendricks said the woman — who turned out to be Najwa — would let Hassen into the Petersens’ Athlone home, and that the murder had to look like an armed robbery gone wrong.
Hassen said though he said he would do the job, he had intended only to beat the husband to teach him a lesson.
However, on the night of December 16 2006, when he and co-accused Jefferson Snyders went to the Grasmere Street home and bound Taliep with cable ties, Najwa kept demanding that he finish the job.
”You must finish the man off,” she allegedly told him. ”You must shoot him. You must shoot him tonight.”
”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 he was carrying.
With props — a green cushion, which he said was similar to the one used on the night, a 9mm Parabellum supplied by the investigating officer and a court orderly acting the role of Najwa — he showed the court how she allegedly reached over his left arm and pulled the trigger.
He was looking away at the time, he said.
After the shot was fired 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 head.
Hassen said that while 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.
Before embarking on the demonstration, Hassen expertly slid back the breech of the pistol to check that — as the judge had been assured — there were indeed no bullets in the gun. — Sapa