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'I recorded yengeni cop'

A LOUD TV news broadcast drowned out a secret cellphone recording of former senior policeman Siphiwo Hewana's alleged unlawful request for a false docket to be opened to protect Tony Yengeni, the Parow regional court heard yesterday.

A LOUD TV news broadcast drowned out a secret cellphone recording of former senior policeman Siphiwo Hewana's alleged unlawful request for a false docket to be opened to protect Tony Yengeni, the Parow regional court heard yesterday.

This was the testimony of police director Johannes Brand who, with Deputy Commissioner Raymond Ntobela, was asked by Western Cape commissioner Mzwandile Petros to investigate the time of the arrest of the former ANC chief whip.

Hewana's trial before magistrate Elsa van Zyl on charges that include an attempt to defeat the ends of justice, is a sequel to Yengeni's arrest soon after midnight on Sunday November 25 2007.

At the time Yengeni was out on parole after a prison sentence for fraud.

The parole conditions required that Yengeni be home by 10pm and not to drink alcohol.

Prosecutor Barry van der Berg alleges that to save Yengeni from returning to jail, Hewana asked the arresting officials, Charles Japhta and Jeremy Voskuil, to open a false docket stating Yengeni's time of arrest as 9pm on November 25 instead of 12.03am on November 26.

Brand, Western Cape provincial head of general investigations, said he asked Japhta for proof of the visit to Hewana's office.

Japhta produced his cellphone, with which he had secretly recorded the discussion in Hewana's office.

Japhta played the recording to Brand but a loud TV news broadcast in Hewana's office that night drowned out the discussion.

Japhta then took Brand and Ntobela to his home in Pinehurst, where the original docket, with the correct information in it, was hidden in a cupboard.

The case continues. - Sapa

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