The trial of former police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi was a legal bullring on Thursday morning, as Judge Meyer Joffe and defence counsel Jaap Cilliers butted heads on whether Joffe has been biased towards the prosecution.
The trial reconvened after a five-day adjournment, instigated by Cilliers asking Joffe to recuse himself from the case.
On Thursday morning Cilliers listed the ways in which Selebi felt that Joffe had been biased against him. The first was that when the state’s main witness, drug-dealer Glenn Agliotti, admitted to lying to the court, Joffe did not raise the issue of the ”conduct of the prosecution” who ”had knowledge of the fact that their witness was lying”.
”They must disclose it … they must stand up and say [Agliotti] is lying to your lordship. That has been the practice for centuries,” said Cilliers.
Joffe replied with visible agitation: ”At no stage was there a formal objection raised against the prosecution. I find it remarkable that you take umbrage at me for not doing so … If you have any objection to the prosecution proceeding in this manner, I have difficulty understanding why you didn’t raise such an objection, and why you take me to task for not raising the objection.”
Cilliers’s next point was that chief prosecutor Gerrie Nel and his prosecuting team withheld important documents from the defence, which they then included in a bundle they had handed to Joffe.
”The prosecution acted with ulterior motive … they manipulated the evidence,” said Cilliers. ”You did not raise how it came about that the documents were put in that bundle.”
Joffe, appearing to be nearing the end of his tether, asked Cilliers: ”Mr Cilliers, how long have you been senior counsel? If you felt hard done by by Mr Nel’s conduct, why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve dealt with it. Why do you put it at my door and not raise it yourself … I’m being taken to task for not chastising Mr Nel. I’m putting it to you, why didn’t you raise the objection?”
Cilliers persisted that it was the court’s duty to object, and said: ”The fact that we didn’t raise it did not take away from your duty as a custodian of the Constitution, to ask how did it happen that these documents were put before me.”
The third issue revolved around a controversial City Press article of two weeks ago, which described a video that had been leaked to the newspaper by an unknown source. Joffe had not allowed Cilliers to complete cross-examining Agliotti on the article.
Joffe’s main concern at the time was that ”somebody is trying to influence proceedings in this trial”, while the defence showed it had no concern with how the video came about, but rather was interested in its contents, which allegedly contradicted Agliotti’s evidence.
”Mr Cilliers, what do you want me to say?” asked Joffe. ”There is an article in the press which casts doubt. At which point did I stop you — when the reporter expressed an opinion of what he or she saw … Unless the reporter gives evidence, or the video is found, there is no evidence. How does an article become evidence?”
Cilliers insisted that the article was pivotal, as the allegations ”fly in the face of evidence [Agliotti] provided under oath in his evidence in chief”.
Cilliers then moved on to the dinner in France, which Selebi allegedly held in order to lobby votes for his presidency at Interpol. He claimed that after the defence found that the cheque which Agliotti claimed to have used to pay for Selebi’s dinner was dated a year after the alleged event had happened, Joffe raised the possibility of it being used for a ”celebratory dinner”, which would ”corroborate” Agliotti’s story. ”You raised a way out for the witness,” Cilliers told the court.
Argument continues.