A police cellphone expert established that there was communication between four men accused of murdering North West tycoon Wandile Bozwana on the day he was killed.
WO Wynand Venter from the Gauteng provincial operational coordination centre yesterday told the North Gauteng High Court in Pretoria that the four men accused of Bozwana's murder and attempted murder of his business partner, Mpho Baloyi, had been in contact numerous times when he was gunned down on October 2 2015.
Sipho Patrick Hudla, Matamela Robert Mutapa, Vusi Reginald "Khekhe" Mathibela and Bonginkosi Paul Khumalo face charges of murder and attempted murder.
Venter told and illustrated to the court through three reports that communication took place between the accused on the day of the murder.
Without specifying the number of times calls were made between the accused, Venter read out their cellphone numbers into record and confirmed that they belonged to the accused.
"Three calls from Khumalo to Mathibela, from Khumalo to Mutapa, Khumalo to Hudla, and from Mathibela to Khumalo," Venter said.
He further said nine calls were made between Mathibela and Khumalo on November 18 2015.
Venter said the information obtained was from the call records and not the handsets used by the accused.
He said the information contained in his report was not obtained from the physical SIM cards either.
"Any phone call made from handsets is recorded by the specific network provider. Not the conversation, but the actual call emanating from one handset to another," he said.
He said the information obtained can be used to determine whether a certain number called another number.
"You can look at the period as well. If you take multiple calls you can determine common links between numbers," Venter said.
"Also part of the records received from the networks will have the actual Rica information - the name of the owner of the SIM card. And also on the records, it will give you a tower that picked up the signal when the cellphone was used. The tower we use mainly to determine the vicinity where the cellphone was when it (cellphone) was activated."
Venter said there would be no records if the phone was not in use. "But a cellphone would need to be activated by sending a message, a WhatsApp message or [to be] on the internet.
"Any device, as long it is switched on is communicating with several towers in the vicinity - maybe eight towers to determine which has the strongest signal. But that is not recorded because that would require a massive amount of data."
He said this sort of data is not stored by the network providers. Venter explained that information obtained from the physical handset would consist of everything on the handset.
"A smartphone for instance, keeps a record of everything; call records, sms, WhatsApp, contacts but depending on the settings on the phone," he said.
Venter is expected to continue with his testimony today.
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