Port Elizabeth cop probed after torture claim
Allegations a ploy to have dead soldier’s benefits released to widow, police colleague says
A woman under investigation for her husband’s murder has taken on a senior Port Elizabeth police officer, accusing him of assaulting a 14-year-old witness.
Allegations that LieutenantColonel Willie Mayi of the Organised Crime Unit’s provincial investigating unit held the child’s hands behind his back and put a bag over his head in an attempt to “make him speak” are being probed by the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (Ipid).
The boy, a relative of SA National Defence Force soldier Zolile Seteni, 54, who was assassinated in his Motherwell home in August, alleges that Mayi threatened to kill him should he not spill the beans and implicate the soldier’s wife.
The youngster was on the property on the day of the murder.
Dubbed an “enforcer” in the past, Mayi was accused in 2017 of torturing the middleman in the Christopher Panayiotou murder trial.
Police spokesperson Colonel Priscilla Naidu said she could only comment on the claims once Ipid had concluded its investigation.
Mayi, while aware of the probe, was not permitted to comment.
However, a police officer close to the case said the allegations were a ploy to have the soldier’s benefits released to his widow, Thenjiwe, 44.
Seteni was a staff sergeant at the Port Elizabeth Army Support Base in Forest Hill.
He was shot in the head while asleep in his bed in his Gqwaru Street home at about 6am on August 8.
Nothing was stolen and police believe it was a hit.
The suspected middleman and one of the alleged hitmen have also since been killed. No arrests have been made. Thenjiwe’s lawyer, Dean Murray, confirmed that she was being treated as a suspect in the case.
However, Murray said police now either needed to act on their threats of arresting Thenjiwe – or release Seteni’s assets to her so that she could take care of her two children.
Murray said on Monday that they would turn to the high court for relief.
“It’s been nearly seven months since the assassination.
“We have already addressed letters to the defence force and received no reply.
“Lieutenant-Colonel Mayi has informed me that he is responsible for writing a letter, asking that the deceased’s assets be frozen,” he said.
“They are even refusing to release money for the essentials and daily requirements.
“We cannot wait any longer while the police drag their feet.
“We will bring an application to have money released for maintenance and other urgent needs.”
In reporting a case of common assault, the teenager said in a statement on October 14 that while questioning him at the Mount Road police station the previous day, Mayi had come up behind him and forcefully pulled his arms behind his back, causing him great pain.
The boy was wearing a hooded top, which Mayi allegedly used to throttle him.
As a result, the boy said, he could not breathe.
“A colleague of Mayi handed him a plastic thing that he place over my face strangling me (sic),” he alleged.
“He [said] he doesn’t care if I p**s or k*k, he will definitely kill me tonight.”
Thenjiwe says in her accompanying statement that when she saw the teenager after he had been questioned, he was shaking and scared.
The policeman close to the Seteni investigation, who is not permitted to speak to the media, felt that Mayi had become an easy target to be accused of assault.
He said the allegations against Mayi were all too “suspiciously similar”.
During the highly publicised Panayiotou trial, it was claimed that Luthando Siyoni was tortured into a confession.
The allegations had little effect on judge Dayalin Chetty’s decision to sentence Panayiotou to life in prison for orchestrating the murder of his schoolteacher wife, Jayde, nearly four years ago.
In 2015, the then minister of safety and security was successfully sued for R90,000 after the Port Elizabeth High Court heard how Mayi and other policemen had tied a suspect’s hands to a chair and pulled a plastic bag over his face.
Judge Nomathamsanqa Beshe said the assault had lasted hours and comprised what Mayi and his colleagues referred to as round one and round two levels.
Mayi, the former anti-hijacking task team head, was commended in September 2016 for his successful fouryear investigation into a hit gang targeting witnesses.
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