Lead prosecutor Gerrie Nel on Thursday morning accused former police National Commissioner Jackie Selebi of fabricating a declassified document. Nel also reprimanded Selebi for changing his version for the fifth time.
On day six of Selebi’s evidence in the witness box in the South Gauteng High Court, Selebi produced the document that he had allegedly shown to drug dealer Glenn Agliotti. The document contains names of alleged information-peddlers, including that of businessman Jurgen Kögl, who was alleged to have been spreading rumours that Selebi was paid by the Kebble family.
Selebi was sent home on Wednesday after telling the court he had the original document “at the place where I live”. This led to lengthy debate over whether the document produced in court was in fact the original document Selebi said he found at his Pretoria home on Wednesday, and which he took straight to his lawyer.
Nel accused a very tired looking Selebi on Thursday of “cutting and pasting” paragraphs to create this new document, and then stamping it in order to show that it had been declassified before it had been shown to Agliotti.
False exhibit?
Nel claimed the font and logos on the front of the two documents — the alleged copy before court which had not been declassified, and the original which Selebi produced on Thursday morning — were different.
“I will ask the court to make an inference that you created a false exhibit before court,” said Nel.
“That is absolutely not true,” replied Selebi. Nel later asked Selebi whether former crime intelligence boss Mulangi Mphego created the document for him.
Selebi replied: “I did not create the document. If somebody else did it, they could have done it.”
Nel also chastised Selebi for changing his version once again, after Selebi said that he told Agliotti that the paragraph he was showing him “had to do with the Kebbles”.
Nel said: “I have to tell you again it’s a new version. Why do you change your version every day? … Yesterday, during cross examination, I asked ‘how did [Agliotti] make the connection between Kogl and Kebble’, and you said, ‘I don’t know how he did’ … Today you say you told him. How can that be?”
Nel also pointed out that Selebi went from initially saying he had shown Agliotti a sentence in the document, to saying he had shown him a paragraph.
“It just grows and grows and grows,” said Nel. “You are changing your versions. You build a version as you stand there. You lie.”
Selebi faces charges of corruption and defeating the ends of justice.