Madlanga Commission: Hawks members dispute involvement in alleged interference during Molefe's arrest

Members of the Hawks’ serious organised crime division disputed their involvement in alleged interference during the arrest of Katiso "KT" Molefe.

Three senior Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation (DPCI) officials, including the Gauteng DPCI head, testified before the Madlanga Commission of Inquiry on Tuesday

Their testimony centred around the raid at the luxury mansion of Molefe in December.

Molefe was arrested by members of the political killings task team (PKTT) for the murder of Vereeniging engineer, Armand Swart.

Previous testimony suggested possible interference by members of the Hawks during a clandestine operation to arrest Molefe.

But this was disputed by members of the Hawks, who testified before the Madlanga Commission on Tuesday.

Warrant Officer Paul Radebe said they simply acted on instruction to verify who was conducting the operation.

"Our instruction was to find if there is really members of the Hawks that are at Sandton that are conducting an operation because the office has no clue of an operation."

Captain Dail Nortjie said they were only at the scene for a few minutes.

"The scene, we didn’t spend more than 15 minutes."

Gauteng Hawks head, Ebrahim Kadwa, said the verification was important because they had in the past dealt with people impersonating Hawks officials.

"We field quite a lot of situations, I wouldn’t say daily but at regular intervals where there are people that are bogus."

Kadwa instructed members from the serious organised crime unit to verify the operation following queries from former Hawks head Godfrey Lebeya.