The truck driver who blew the whistle on an international drug-smuggling ring with major tentacles in South Africa has finally told his side of the story.
Anthony Dormehl was called this week by the Scorpions to testify against alleged drug-dealer Stefanos Paparas, his father, Dimitrio, and their transport man, Stanley Poonin, in the Germiston Regional Court in a trial closely related to proceedings against police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi.
Dormehl was one of the Scorpions’ main whistleblowers in their Operation Bad Guys investigation.
His tip-offs led the Scorpions to the arrest of Stefanos Paparas and exposed an alleged major drug-trafficking network from Asia to Europe via South Africa.
On Thursday he told the court how he helped Stefanos Paparas and slain mining magnate Brett Kebble’s murder accused, Glenn Agliotti, to transport hashish worth more than R200-million.
Self-confessed drug-trafficker Robert Lottman, also known as Bob the American, testified two weeks ago that he organised the hashish to be shipped from Pakistan via Iran and South Africa to Belgium.
Dormehl, who was originally arrested and charged with Stefanos and Dimitrio Paparas, turned state witness after striking a deal with the Scorpions.
Defence advocate Sita Kolbe hammered at this aspect before Dormehl could start his testimony.
”The manner in which statements were extracted from this witness is not admissible in court,” Kolbe told magistrate Deon Snyman, explaining that her clients will submit that Dormehl was forced into making his statement.
Kolbe strongly suggested that former head of security at OR Tambo airport and Scorpions informant Paul O’Sullivan was behind Dormehl’s decision to turn to the state after his arrest.
She said the defence would bring an application for Dormehl’s evidence to be thrown out of court because the Scorpions did not follow their own regulations in obtaining his statements and because O’Sullivan forced him to say certain things.
Dormehl admitted O’Sullivan’s role in his case, calling him a ”family friend” who used the services of his transport business, Premier Transport. O’Sullivan initially contacted Dormehl through his father, who set up a meeting between the two.
He also testified that Agliotti had introduced him to Stefanos Paparas to assist in the transport of the hashish.
Kolbe kept to her battle strategy of portraying the state’s witnesses as tools in a bigger plot to capture the big fish – Selebi.
She put it to the state’s second witness, Christiaan Alblas, that the Scorpions had urged him: ”Plead guilty, give us evidence against Agliotti and Selebi.”
She put it to Alblas that he had agreed to plead guilty only because the Scorpions had told him they needed him to nail Selebi.
Lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel was at pains to defend his unit’s decision to grant plea bargains to certain witnesses in the case.
At the recent hearings of the Ginwala inquiry Nel and his former boss, Vusi Pikoli, were accused of posing a threat to national security by granting plea bargains to Agliotti and Kebble’s former security chief, Clinton Nassif.
The two men have been implicated in Kebble’s murder, which the National Prosecuting Authority this week confirmed it viewed as a planned suicide.
Kolbe repeated that Stefanos Paparas would tell the court he had been offered a plea bargain to help prosecute Selebi. Her client, Kolbe told the court, had refused the Scorpions’ advances.
The case was postponed to March next year.