A forensic cellphone analyst said there is no evidence that the cellphones of a Cape Flats woman accused of planning a grenade attack on the home of Lieutenant-Colonel Charl Kinnear were tampered with.
Francois Möller took the stand at the Western Cape HIgh Court on Thursday where he provided Judge Robert Henney with an in-depth explanation into the recovery of data off the cellphones of Jantjies.
This comes after legal teams questioned the evidence presented by the Hawks against Jantjies and her former berk Janick Adonis in the mammoth underworld trial centred on the murder of the slain Anti-Gang Unit detective.
The duo are accused of orchestrating various attacks on Kinnear’s Bishop Lavis home in November 2019 which included the grenade incident.
They face several counts of conspiracy to commit murder after explosive texts, calls and voice notes found on Jantjies’ phones revealed she liaised with at least five co-conspirators to attack the Kinnear home.
Möller, who testified against convicted 28s gang boss George ‘Geweld’ Thomas several years ago, was flown in from Johannesburg to explain the analysis of the phones.
The former police officer who specialises in the analysis of cellphone data said files from the devices were first extracted by Saps officers in December 2019, and he received the phones a year later to assess whether there had been any tampering with the information.
Möller explained that investigators initially found 181 138 media files but as he had used the latest version of the XRY software, he was able to retrieve more files, 192 201 to be exact.
He explained that if the devices had been tampered with, he would have found less files, not more.
The most contentious issue was a claim made by Jantjies that audio files where she allegedly recorded meetings at the AGU base with Major-General Andre Lincoln were deleted by cops after her arrest.
Möller confirmed that he had found over 20 deleted files but these were not the files Jantjies talked about.
In the cross examination, he explained that the voice recorder app of one cellphone only had four files. These four files were played and described during proceedings.
He explained that the deleted audio files which he was able to retrieve were in fact voice notes from WhatsApp.
Möller explained there was no way of knowing when files were deleted as the Cellebrite software did not provide that insight.
Questioned by defence Advocate Pauline Andrews as to whether the WhatsApp audio files could be played, Möller, said: ‘We can see that the files were on the database and deleted but we cannot get the actual recordings as it says files do not exist.“
The trial continues.