South Africa’s Police Watchdog Chief Speaks on High-Profile Cases
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Tags: General Khomotso Phahlane, Independent Police Investigative Directorate, Paul O'Sullivan, Robert McBride
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Private investigator Paul O’Sullivan has never pretended to be an Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) official. And his arrest was a serious act of intimidation, IPID head Robert McBride told the police committee in Parliament on Wednesday.
McBride was briefing the committee on some of their high profile cases, including their case against acting national police commissioner General Khomotso Phahlane.
O’Sullivan was arrested on Monday outside AfriForum’s offices in Pretoria, and taken to the Kameeldrift police station, where he was charged with offences including fraud, intimidation and extortion.
He was released late on Monday night.
IPID on Wednesday was questioned on O’Sullivan’s role within the unit, and the events leading up to his arrest.
The unit clarified that O’Sullivan was merely a complainant in the case, who had knowledge of the offences and had raised them while McBride and his team had been on suspension.
McBride told the committee that the case against O’Sullivan would not go anywhere.
“There isn’t a snowball in hell’s chance that those claims of false impersonation of IPID officials will ever stand up in court. That simply did not happen. The issue here is Phahlane’s corrupt relationship, not who assisted us on the investigation,” he said.
Chief of investigations Matthews Sesoko said O’Sullivan was not contracted to IPID, either as a service provider or an investigator.
“We get information from him, we follow up and more often than not, [that] information checks out and you cannot ignore that,” he said.
They validated any information that came from witnesses and whistleblowers, IPID said, and that was the same with information coming from O’Sullivan.
“Why, if they needed O’Sullivan to go to court, didn’t they summon him specifically? Why didn’t they take a statement from IPID or the IPID investigator about what happened at the interviews?” McBride asked the committee.
He questioned the motives behind the arrest of O’Sullivan and his assistant Sarah Jane Trent.
