Security beefed up for appearance of alleged mastermind behind fatal Wynberg court shooting

CAPE TOWN - Security at Wynberg Magistrates Court was beefed up on Monday when the woman accused of masterminding a fatal shooting inside the building made her first appearance.

A queue of people waiting to enter the court building before proceedings started, stretched all the way down a road adjacent to the premises.

When entering, security guards asked the public to remove all metal objects before going through a metal detector and being thoroughly searched.

The alleged mastermind behind last week's brazen attack, Shireen Mathews, made a brief appearance in a packed courtroom under heavy police guard.

Mathews will be back in court on 23 April and police said that with another suspect arrested on Monday, four more arrests were on the cards.

Acting police commissioner, General Bongani Maqashalala, said that the Crime Intelligence unit was doing a threat assessment of the building.

"Due to the preliminary threat assessment that we are doing, we decided to beef up the security at this court. We are going to look at others because we don't want anything of this nature, and we are going to have some discussions with the justice department because access control is their responsibility."