Top cop expected to testify in Cape Town underworld extortion trial

A senior policeman is expected to testify on Wednesday in the extortion trial of alleged Cape Town underworld leaders Nafiz Modack and Colin Booysen.

Lt-Col Charl Kinnear, acting under orders of his then boss Maj-Gen Jeremy Vearey, arrested Modack, Booysen, Jacques Cronje, Ashley Fields and Carl Lakay on extortion charges at the end of 2017.

Since the start of the Cape Town regional court hearings, including a lengthy bail application, the defendants' lawyers - including murdered advocate Pete Mihalik - have claimed the arrest had a nefarious purpose.

They said it was intended to frustrate their clients on behalf of another underworld faction allegedly controlled by Mark Lifman and Booysen's older brother and nemesis, Jerome "Donkie" Booysen.

Since the trial started, various corruption allegations have surfaced around Kinnear.

At the end of 2018, the policeman struck back at the team investigating him in an affidavit to the Independent Police Investigative Directorate claiming the officers were part of a rogue unit targeting Vearey and himself.

The Sunday Times previously reported about Kinnear's involvement in the alleged cover-up of the murder of neighbourhood watch member Mervyn Jacobs in Tafelsig in 2009.

He allegedly kidnapped a witness in an attempt to extract false statements to frame two suspects for the murder.

The investigating officer in the case alleged that the murder was committed by two members of the 28s gang but said Vearey - commander at Mitchells Plain police station at the time - steered them away from the suspects.

The case came to light a decade later when a national intervention team was sent to the Western Cape by police headquarters in Pretoria to investigate what was dubbed "infighting" in the Western Cape police.