Shaik trial a ‘dry run’ for Zuma prosecution, court told

Shaik is applying for leave to appeal against his conviction on two counts of corruption and one of fraud, his 15-year prison sentence and the seizure of his assets. Addressing the court first, his counsel Martin Brassey, SC, contended that Shaik\'s trial was a ‘dry run’ for a prosecution of ANC Deputy President Jacob Zuma. The reasons for not trying the two men together were ‘entirely spurious,’ and had nothing to do with a lack of evidence, Brassey said. The court should have required the prosecution to give reasons for separating the cases. Shaik had been put up as ‘bait’. ‘That is deeply unfair,’ Brassey submitted. ‘He shouldn\'t be used as a dummy or trial run, which is certainly what appeared to have happened here.’ Pressed to explain how Zuma\'s absence had prejudiced Shaik, Brassey said that, had Zuma appeared, it would have been as the deputy president of the country entering the witness box to tell the court ‘this is how it is between Shaik and me’. Zuma might have testified that he was a friend of Shaik, who had helped him ‘comrade to comrade’, as a compatriot, ‘as a father helps a son’. Full report on the IoL site

In particular, the role of the prosecutor Billy Downer was irregular, Brassey told the court. Although there was no objection to Downer’s appointment as investigator of the case, he should not have prosecuted and offered himself as a witness in the case. ‘He enters the courtroom like the BP man — all blown up with information he should not properly have had.’ This left the case ‘flawed at the very core’, he is quoted as saying in a report in The Witness. On sentencing, Brassey argued that it was unfair to bring an over-arching charge of corruption, then single out one of those incidents and, in so doing, trigger the minimum sentence with effects ‘highly detrimental’ to Shaik. The State argues its case today. Full report in The Witness