Thandi Maqubela believes someone else had her husband Patrick Maqubela’s cellphone at the time of his death.
|||Cape Town - Someone in possession of the late acting judge Patrick Maqubela’s cellphone had been following his wife, Thandi Maqubela, around the time of his death, she has told the Western Cape High Court.
This was the explanation she gave to the court for the fact that, on the day of the acting judge’s death, his phone was found to be near her at all times.
The State alleges the acting judge was killed by his wife and co-accused Vela Mabena on June 5, 2009.
They have both pleaded not guilty to the charge while Maqubela also faces charges of forgery and fraud relating to her husband’s will.
On Thursday, State advocate Bonnie Currie-Gamwo questioned cellphone evidence which showed that the late acting judge’s phone and the widow’s cellphones were “travelling in the same path” on the day he is believed to have died.
It had previously emerged that SMSes were sent from his phone that appeared to be triggering the same base stations as those of Maqubela’s phone.
The evidence appears in the cellphone billing records before court.
The court had also previously heard that cellphone calls were made to Thandi Maqubela’s business associates from her husband’s cellphone that Friday in 2009.
Currie-Gamwo accused Maqubela of being in possession of her husband’s cellphone and of sending messages from it.
But Maqubela denied this. She mentioned an earlier incident in which her husband had claimed to have been followed, and referred to another SMS in the court record which appeared to back this. “In the bundle there is a message about following, ‘these Zuma people are following me’,” she replied.
“Are you suggesting someone was following you?” asked Currie-Gamwo.
“It is possible,” she replied.
“Who?”
“I don’t know.”
Presiding Judge Murphy asked whether Maqubela was insinuating that the person who was following her had used her husband’s phone to send messages to her business associates and to her.
Maqubela replied: “I suppose.”
Judge Murphy: “Isn’t it strange that your husband’s phone would phone only the people you knew?”
“It is strange, my lord.”
The State also claims that Maqubela had a hand in a call made to the late acting judge’s registrar, Joy Ely-Hanslo, saying he was in hospital. And that Maqubela had deliberately missed a meeting with her husband at Cape Town International Airport because in reality she had no plans to meet him.
“Just like you made up all those stories, because you were never going to meet him, because he was dead,” Currie Gamwo charged.
Maqubela denied the State’s claims. - Cape Argus