The girlfriend of a State witness in the murder trial of Christopher Panayiotou is on Friday expected to appear in the Port Elizabeth Magistrate’s Court on charges of perjury and defeating the ends of justice.
Babalwa Breakfast, 23, was arrested on Thursday, shortly after her testimony in the same court where the ongoing murder trial involving Panayiotou and his two co-accused Sinethemba Nenembe and Zolani Sibeko was underway.
She is the girlfriend of the State’s Section 204 witness and alleged middleman, Luthando Siyoni who was allegedly hired by Panayiotou to find hitmen to kill his schoolteacher wife, Jayde, last year.
Breakfast was declared a hostile witness on Thursday. Crying hysterically, she hid her face from reporters and photographers as she was led away by police officers to the court’s holding cells.
Defence Advocate Terry Price accused the State of using intimidation tactics, saying that he was “perturbed” by her arrest and would argue intimidation at a later stage.
Advocate Peter Daubermann who is representing Nenembe and Sibeko said he “strongly condemned” Breakfast’s arrest. He said other witnesses could fear intimidation and this would infringe his clients’ rights to a fair trial.
On Wednesday, Breakfast told the court how she stashed money in her old school socks and counted the cash after being told to do so by her boyfriend with whom she had been in a “loving” relationship with for five years.
But her testimony contradicted her affidavits, including from Breakfast’s first statement made to police on April 27.
Siyoni was employed by Panayiotou as a bouncer at his Infinity nightclub. The State alleges Panayiotou paid Siyoni to hire hitman Sizwe Vumazonke, who has since died, to kidnap and murder Jayde in April last year.
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