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‘Pinging Kinnear’: Hawks’ head Godfrey Lebeya failed to protect national security and the top detective

‘Pinging Kinnear’: Hawks’ head Godfrey Lebeya failed to protect national security and the top detective
Caryn Dolley
By Caryn Dolley
24 Jun 2022
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Two Hawks officers should be criminally charged for failing to act when detective Charl Kinnear’s cellphone was being monitored before his assassination, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) has found. The complicity of network service providers still needed to be investigated. This is one of five Daily Maverick articles on Ipid’s final findings.

Two Hawks officers should be criminally charged for failing to act when detective Charl Kinnear’s cellphone was being monitored before his assassination, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid) has found. The complicity of network service providers still needed to be investigated. This is one of five Daily Maverick articles on Ipid’s final findings.

In the run-up to detective Charl Kinnear’s assassination on 18 September 2020 outside his Bishop Lavis home, his cellphone was monitored and his location was tracked.

At the time of his murder, Kinnear was investigating several underworld cases and other cops were aware that his cellphone was being illegally monitored. Yet, they did not act on this, it has emerged.

In November last year Daily Maverick reported on Ipid’s preliminary findings into why police did not act properly to prevent Kinnear’s murder, which came after threats against him were picked up.

Criminal charges and failure to protect state security


Now, in its final report dated May 2022 which Daily Maverick has seen, Ipid has recommended that two officers (whose identities are known to Daily Maverick, a major-general and a warrant officer) attached to the Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI), better known as the Hawks, should be criminally charged with defeating the course of justice.

It also made scathing findings about the national Hawks’ head Lieutenant-General Godfrey Lebeya. 

Ipid found: “[He] failed to ensure that the DPCI members implicated investigated the threat against the state and therefore failed to protect the national interest or security of the state.”

In its latest report, Ipid said there had been a statement from an individual who was a wholesaler of “pings” supplied via a company owned by a South African based in the US.

This individual would “purchase the ‘pings’/precise mobile location in bundles” from the company and resell these at a mark-up.

“[These others] would then access a website by using their allocated username and password and log in the cellphone number they intend to ping; the system would then send a location to the cellphone tower closest to the owner of the said cellphone number and therefore be in a position through its geographical coordinates or google mapping track/pinpoint the whereabouts of the subscriber/person,” the Ipid report said.

Tracking via pinging was largely illegal.

Zane Kilian, who is among those charged in connection with Kinnear’s assassination, was accused of pinging Kinnear’s cellphone.

Ignored warning


The Ipid report said that on 3 September 2020, which would be 15 days before Kinnear was murdered, the person who was a wholesaler of pings did an audit and noticed Kinnear’s phone was being consistently pinged.

Worried Kinnear’s life was in danger, the person alleged he arranged to meet a warrant officer who dealt with crimes against the state.

The officer instructed the individual “to continue the facilitation of the illegal monitoring”.

Two days before Kinnear was killed, the Ipid report said, the individual and warrant officer “had a fall-out… after the ‘pings’ had further increased in frequency and times and no results had been forthcoming”.

Prima facie evidence


Kinnear was assassinated despite officials within the state knowing his cellphone was being tracked.

“DPCI Gauteng had failed to initiate a criminal investigation into the illegal monitoring of the late Lieutenant Colonel Kinnear’s cellphone, as the investigation revealed that DPCI had knowledge of the person or particulars of the person or persons involved in the illegal monitoring of the … Kinnear’s phone/movement,” Ipid’s report found.

“DPCI had sufficient and prima facie evidence at hand to have applied for a search and seizure warrant to stop the illegal monitoring, seized equipment and ensure that the ongoing crime being committed against the state was neutralised.”

It said that in failing to do anything, the warrant officer and major-general “acted unlawfully and criminally through their failure to act on this, and resulted in the killing of the late Lieutenant Colonel Kinnear”.

Ipid said “the complicity of network service providers” still needed to be investigated. This would include looking into “the illegal monitoring of individuals’ movement and interception/processing of data”. DM

 

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