Police detective Hilton Botha arrived at court for the bail hearing of Oscar Pistorius on Wednesday.
The disclosure seemed to present one more setback for the prosecution
and to deepen questions surrounding the detective, Hilton Botha. Under
cross-examination at a bail hearing on Wednesday, the officer was forced
to concede that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s own version of
events based on the existing evidence.
While the prosecution has accused Mr. Pistorius, 26, of the premeditated
murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp, 29, a week ago, the track
star himself said he opened fire thinking there was an intruder in his
home in a gated community and had no intention of killing her.
In a development that seemed as bewildering as it was sensational on
Thursday, Police Brig. Neville Malila said that Mr. Botha is himself set
to appear in court in May facing attempted murder charges relating to
an incident in October 2011, when Mr. Botha and two other police
officers were accused of firing at a minivan carrying seven people.
The case had initially been dropped but was reinstated on Wednesday at
the insistence of the state prosecutor, even as Mr. Botha was appearing
as the lead police witness in the prosecution’s attempt to prevent Mr.
Pistorius from securing bail.
“Botha and two other policemen allegedly tried to stop a minibus taxi
with seven people. They fired shots," Brigadier Malila told Reuters.
“We were informed yesterday that the charges will be reinstated,” he
said. “At this stage, there are no plans to take him off the Pistorius
case.”
Prosecutors said on Thursday they were unaware of the charges when they
called Detective Botha as their lead witness in the argument over bail
on Wednesday.
Medupe Simasiku, a spokesman for the prosecutors, said it was not clear
whether they would seek to remove him from the case.
Mr. Pistorius returned to court on Thursday for further arguments about
whether he should be granted bail in a case that has riveted South
Africa and fascinated a wider audience, reflecting Mr. Pistorius’s
status as one of the world’s most renowned athletes, whose distinctive
carbon-fiber running blades have given him the nickname Blade Runner.
On Wednesday, what was supposed to be a simple bail hearing took on the
proportions of a full-blown trial, with sharp questions from the
presiding magistrate, Desmond Nair, and a withering cross-examination
that left Detective Botha grasping for answers that did not contradict
his earlier testimony.
Initially, Detective Botha explained how preliminary ballistic evidence
supported the prosecution’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius had been
wearing prosthetic legs when he shot at a bathroom door early on Feb.
14. Ms. Steenkamp, a model and law school graduate, was hiding behind it
at the time.
Mr. Pistorius said in an affidavit read to the court on Tuesday that he
had hobbled over from his bed on his stumps and had felt extremely
vulnerable to a possible intruder as a result.
But when questioned by Barry Roux, Mr. Pistorius’s lawyer, Detective
Botha was forced to acknowledge sloppy police work, and he eventually
conceded that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s version of events
based on the existing evidence. Mr. Roux accused the prosecution of
selectively taking “every piece of evidence” and trying “to extract the
most possibly negative connotation and present it to the court.”
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