A former top cop was grilled in the Western Cape High Court on Wednesday as a judge called his conduct “cagey” and his explanations over a cellphone used in an attempted murder plot “hopeless”.
The conduct of former Anti-Gang Unit (AGU) boss, Major-General Andre Lincoln, came under scrutiny at the Charl Kinnear murder trial, as he was blasted for handing a bandiet a cellphone and later contradicting himself.
The contentious claims by a co-accused of alleged underworld kingpin, Nafiz Modack, led to a dramatic outburst this week as Janick Adonis openly accused Lincoln of lying under oath.
Adonis along with his former girlfriend Amaal Jantjies are charged with crimes linked to a grenade attack on the home of slain detective, Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear, in November 2019.
Adonis, who manged at Helderstroom Correctional Centre, was reportedly transported by AGU officers to their base in Faure after exposing a plan allegedly concocted by Modack to murder Kinnear, Lincoln and Captain Althea Jaftha.
According to the bandiet, he was handed a cellphone by Lincoln which was used to communicate with cops in the planning of the attack.
He claims that cops wanted to pounce on Modack after the attack on Kinnear’s home and planned to shoot and kill him.
On 23 November 2019, Jantjies was arrested by AGU officers after their manskap, Faeez ‘Mamokie’ Smith, was caught outside Kinnear’s home with a hand grenade.
Adonis said the next day cops arrived at Malmesbury Prison, where he had subsequently been moved to, and claimed Lincoln handed him back the very phone allegedly used in the staged attack.
It is understood that this was done to see whether Modack would call Adonis.
Modack’s defence lawyer, Advocate Bash Sibda, told the court that Lincoln initially denied the presence of a cellphone, but when confronted with his own statement which showed a phone was handed to Adonis, he changed his story.
Sibda grilled Lincoln on the stand, saying the phone was essentially a “tool used in an assassination”.
Admissions made to the court, however, show that Lincoln handed the phone back to Adonis for a day and instructed a Department of Correctional Services officer to supervise him, but then the phone went missing.
As Lincoln suggested corruption among wardens as a possible reason for the missing phone, Sibda argued that he was “like a workman who blames his tools”.
Sibda blasted: “Your story doesn’t add up, because we know that it is a fact that the phone got lost and it was for only one day that the phone had to be monitored.
“General, you are like a workman who wants to blame his tools. This plan, this stratagem is your plan.
“You were bending the rules for Adonis to have a phone and now you want to wash your hands off and throw your colleague under the bus.
“Your story is highly improbable and if your story is true, there is no way on God’s green earth that that phone could go missing.”
Henney also raised his concerns about the cellphone calling Lincoln’s explanation a “hopeless exercise”.
The seasoned Judge also reflected on earlier testimonies of two officers from AGU, saying everyone seemed “cagey” when questioned about the phone.