Task-team killings procured by private interests (Durban)

Evidence from Len Barnabas John, deputy director for investigations at IPID in KwaZulu-Natal (day 157) that SAPS task teams were deployed to kill on the instruction of private commercial interests in the Durban tow-truck and drug turf war, and that the task teams' wider killing pattern operates to close dockets rather than to make arrests. The keystone allegation is that "at the instance of Mr Clive Naicker, the alleged leader of a drug and tow trucking gang, Lieutenant Colonel Deena Govender deployed the task teams to kill Mr Bevan Loftus" — put on the record as a prima facie case, not a finding. Around that sits a documented pattern: 77 cases involving 149 deaths; crime scenes at which all occupants present are killed rather than arrested; a task-team commander frequently unable to name the people killed; a suspicion that those killed "may not have even been involved in any CIT robberies"; and the structural incentive that "once a person is killed, the docket gets closed". The commercial substrate is a Durban towing sector of at least ten registered operators competing for accident recovery work, in which drivers "were killed" in the turf war. This scheme is DELIBERATELY TWO-SIDED. Bevan Loftus is both the alleged target of a task-team killing and himself named, in a separate deponent's statement, as the driver in an armed attack on Allan Subramoney (E000333); an attempted-murder case was opened against him and he is alleged to have threatened Hawks members. The record does not resolve this and the scheme must not be rendered as though it does. Distinct from SC0003 (PKTT disbandment) although both concern task teams: SC0003 is about the political control of a national unit, this is about a provincial unit's lethal deployment being procured by private business interests. Distinct from SC0012 (Hillbrow sugilite theft) although both involve officers acting for private gain.