Marikana: The investigation's integrity compromised as Small Koppie's crime
scene defaced
Greg Marinovich
South Africa
6 September 2012 00:40 (South Africa)
While between 3,000 and 5,000 striking miners were marching five kilometers to
deliver their demands to Lonmin management, the police, it seems, were quite
busy at Small Koppie. As luck would have it, GREG MARINOVICH and a bunch of
attorneys were there soon after. Result: Small Koppie keeps delivering wallops
of disturbing information.
An attorney with the Legal Resources Centre, Michael Power, was at Small
Koppie at about 11 am. He was taking pictures of the letters denoting where
forensic evidence was found. Simultaneously, there was a group of men, not in
uniform, also taking pictures. One of them approached Power and introduced
himself as a police captain, and cordially asked them stay out of their shots.
The attorney complied and did not think much of it.
The time date stamp on Powers camera shows that he took his first image at
11h02, and his last at 11h22, before he left the policemen still busy at Small
Koppie and walked to Wonderkop.
At the Marikana Kentucky Fried Chicken (yes, there is one), Power mentioned
that police were at Small Koppie. This was at 11h40 or so. Daily Mavericks
Sipho Hlongwane went to Small Koppie, and called me. He said that something
really odd had happened the crime scene enumeration had been defaced.
Someone had used the same kind of spray paint and made the original letters
indecipherable.
On arriving at Small Koppie myself, I saw that this was indeed the case. It
was perplexing. Shortly thereafter, the attorney Power and the Socio and
Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI) team arrived, whose Jackie
Dugard confirmed that she arrived at about 12h50, and took images that were of
the already defaced letters.
This means that the original crime scene letters were defaced, erased and/or
altered between 11h20 and 12h50. The police were present most of this period.
This means it is highly likely they were responsible for this. It would have
been very, very difficult for anyone else to sneak through unseen.
The big question is: why?
The IPID spokesperson, Moses Dlamini, was unaware of the changes to the
markings. I dont know, I am not commenting, he said.
Let us look at what was defaced, and what was not. The letters E,D, G, H, J,
K, I, H, F and N were defaced. X was not.
A picture gallery:
I have been told by insiders that all these letters except F denote where
bodies lay. F was where a pistol was found. Well, actually F was painted on
the rock closest to where the only firearm was found by police. There is a
painted line running down from F across the sand and onto the facing boulder.
The marking on the facing boulder looks like a faint 1. It was not defaced.
Why?
This is because the mark that looks like a 1 is actually just a line to allow
the crime scene investigator to measure exactly where between the two boulders
the pistol was found. The 1 has no real crime scene significance. It was
therefore ignored. This decision could only have been taken by someone with
intimate knowledge of the crime scene and what each mark meant, or did not
mean.
The paint blobs and splatters, the significance of which I am not sure, were
similarly ignored.
The only painted letter to be ignored was X.
Why? It seemed to be a mystery, until we walked a circumference of the scene.
There we found a rock on the periphery painted with an X. And there were also
two short lines, like dashes, spray painted onto the grass. This was very
similar to the original X, which lay near N.
Four different people, who had spent time at the scene over the last two
weeks, all said that this was the first time they had seen this new X. It was
also new to me. On close inspection, it was clear it was freshly painted. The
dry, brittle grass had not been disturbed by weather or walkers, unlike all
the other, older marks on the grass at other spots.
It remained a puzzle. Some hours while driving home, it became clear to me
an insider had told me that X was the site of a body. This was something I had
missed in my first investigation, and not mentioned in the first story on
Small Koppie.
In my second follow-up story on the murder, I did mention that I now believed
X to be a body, and that short yellow lines marked where head and feet had
lain. That was on Friday August 31.
Now, September 5, there was another X, and two lines showing, presumably, head
and feet. In all likelihood, this was an attempt to discredit the crime scene,
an attempt to ensure enough doubt is cast on exactly which body lay where
and hence what the autopsy and forensics have to say about these bodies.
Dianne Kohler Barnard, the Democratic Alliances Shadow Minister of Police,
says There is this whole structure of protecting your back within the SAPS.
The SAPS protect SAPS, which is why they are incapable of investigating
themselves. They will always cover up. There will always be someone covering
up.
If we find that now police have been interfering with the marking to blur or
interfere with the investigation, then this is the first time that the full
might of the IPID legislation must come to bear. Kohler Barnard added that
interfering with an IPID investigation carried a two-year jail sentence.
The Centre for Applied Legal Studies attorney Kathleen Hardy was at Small
Koppie and said, "We are concerned about what has occurred at the scene. The
reasons for the changes to the markings need to be established to avoid any
later irregularities and to uphold the integrity of the investigations. This
is especially so, considering allegations already made surrounding
contamination of the scenes. This is imperative in determining what happened
on the day."
Let us look at a good faith possibility: the police do not want potential
witnesses influenced by media reports relating to the letters.
I cannot imagine a second good faith possibility. There are two malign
possibilities I can imagine here. One is that the police want to deny
attorneys or experts representing families of the deceased access to knowledge
they might need.
Another is that they want to destroy the links in the chain of evidence
linking the bodies and ballistic and other evidence found to individual
policemen. This would make it very difficult for a court to find beyond
reasonable doubt that a specific individual was guilty of specific crime.
But this surely is nonsense. The crime scene has already been secured, weeks
ago, and the evidence is all safely stashed at
police laboratories. And the
autopsies? Well, we simply don't know in whose hands they are.
The Centre for Applied Legal Studies Bonita Meyersfeld: The IPID is mandated
to investigate police misconduct. The IPID has reportedly undertaken an
investigation, but questions arise as to the extent of that investigation. The
reality is that the police are responsible for investigating a crime scene in
which they are complicit; who is monitoring that investigation?
Should we fear for the integrity of the evidence and the dockets? We urgently
need the police, and the state, to allow independent oversight of this crucial
investigation. We need this to be public. If we are to restore hope in South
Africa's future, we need to restore faith in the forces of law and order, as
well as the justice system. That is not negotiable. DM
All photos: All but one letter at Small Koppie had been altered or defaced. A
new marking was added further to the west, marked with the letter X. This had
not been at the scene at any previous time. Small Koppie, Marikana, North West
province, September 5, 2012. Photos by Greg Marinovich.
http://dailymaverick.co.za/article/2012-09-06-marikana-the-investigations-integrity-compromised-as-small-koppies-crime-scene-defaced
--
Steve Hayes from Tshwane, South Africa
Web: http://khanya.wordpress.com
Blog: http://methodius.blogspot.com
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