Police minister Bheki Cele has apologised for retracting protection from Charl Kinnear and his family after the police officer was gunned down outside his Bishop Lavis home on the weekend.
Cele held a press conference and said it was a mistake for his department to have withdrawn the protection. He further committed to ensuring that Kinnear’s killers are brought to book. It is suspected that Kinner’s murder was an assassination, though the police are yet to confirm this.
According to Daily Maverick, Kinnear was investigating the kingpins of gangs in the Western Cape. His most recent case involved Nafiz Modack, an alleged underworld mafia boss who was arrested on charges of fraud and corruption related to firearm applications and licensing.
Modack’s family and friends had applied for the firearms at offices in Kempton Park and Norwood and were granted licences fraudulently. Kinnear’s other cases involved gangs notorious for terrorising Western Cape suburbs and peddling drugs.
The minister’s apology comes in the wake of Forensics for Justice issuing a R1m reward for information on the people who murdered Kinnear.
Forensics for Justice was founded by investigator, Paul O’Sullivan, and is a non-profit organisation that has focused on unearthing corruption in government and state departments. O’Sullivan has provided hard-hitting evidence that has brought down corrupt civil servants and underworld operators, including former head of the South African police service Jackie Selebi and Czech organised crime boss Radovan Krejčíř .
Read also: The Alec Hogg Show: Meet Paul O’Sullivan, ace investigator taking on SA’s corrupt – and winning
In a statement, O’Sullivan said the reward was meant to send out a message to criminals that Forensics for Justice would not stand idly by whilst the criminal underworld assassinate ethical, hardworking cops at will.
“Having fought to rid the criminal justice system of the evil of corruption for so many years, we will not let the Western Cape become the province that will take South Africa on a slippery slope to lawlessness. Charl Kinnear was a decent cop, the sort of cop that forms the back-bone of a good police service. We need cops like him in our country.
“His killers must be brought to justice. Not only justice for the trigger-man and getaway driver, but the person or persons that ordered the hit.
“There are too many corrupt cops and dirty journalists that work with corrupt cops in our country and we must all be vigilant until they are all in prison, along with the mafia that keep them in their obscene lifestyles,” he said.
Hawks spokesperson Brigadier Hungwani Mulaudzi told News24 that no arrests had been made as yet, adding that he was not aware of the reward.
