- (Sapa) -- Johannesburg socialite Hazel Crane, shot dead
in an assassination on Monday, is reported to have left the country at
one stage on account of the death threats she was receiving.
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- She also reportedly hired 24-hour security to protect
herself. On the day she was murdered, however, her bodyguards were mysteriously
absent.
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- This was in spite of the fact that she was on her way
to court to attend the Lior Saadt proceedings, which she had often attended
accompanied by her guards.
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- Crane was to have testified against Saadt, 33, accused
of murdering her estranged husband Shai Avissar, an alleged kingpin of
the so-called Israeli mafia.
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- While refusing to comment on whether Crane's bodyguards
were paid off, Peter Gastrow, the director of the Cape Town branch of the
Institute for Security Studies (ISS), said paying off people was common
practice among organised crime groups in South Africa.
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- "Anyone who can be bought to clear the way for criminal
activities is bought off, and that includes gardeners, domestics, truck
drivers, security personnel, employees in a company, customs officers,
border control officers etc, the list is endless," Gastrow said.
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- But he said brazen assassinations, such as Crane's which
occurred in broad daylight in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Abbotsford,
could indicate a lack of sophistication on the part of the Israeli criminal
groups.
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- "Organised crime groups tend to go out of their
way not to attract the attention of police or the public. They are low
profile generally. This assassination was a high risk action which is not
all that common in organised crime groups.
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- "It is not advisable from their point of view because
it focuses attention on them. Once a story is carried in the media it immediately
puts pressure on the police and the investigation inevitably becomes more
intense," Gastrow said.
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- He said many different approaches had been used in the
past by more sophisticated gangs, such as the buying off of investigating
officers or magistrates and the sudden disappearance of dockets and of
witnesses.
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- One of the ways to minimise such risks, Gastrow said,
was to convince witnesses to go under witness protection.
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- Witness protection was in fact offered to Crane, but
she refused despite the numerous attempts made on her life and despite
the previous elimination of two potential witnesses against Saadt - Carlo
Binne and Julio Bascelli.
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- Bascelli was shot in the head in a deserted garage in
Modderfontein, east of Johannesburg, shortly after Avissar's murder in
October 1999, while Binne was shot dead at the Johannesburg club Gecko
Lounge in April 2001.
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- Meanwhile in May this year, an attempt was made on Crane's
life when a man in an Audi aimed a firearm her Abbotsford house. Crane
was unhurt but her neighbour was apparently hit.
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- On Monday a friend of Crane's, who was in the car with
her when she was murdered, was hit in the hand. The woman, who is also
a witness in the Saadt case, is currently under police guard in hospital.
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- Superintendent Chris Wilken refused to comment on the
condition of one of the state's last remaining witnesses. He however confirmed
that a post-mortem was being carried out on Crane, the third dead witness
against Saadt, on Wednesday.
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- http://www.iol.co.za/index.php?click_id=13&art_id=qw1068643621649B265&set_id=1
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