Fingered by their cellphones
When Najwa Petersen made numerous cellphone calls to her hitmen she was unaware the phones would prove an open book to forensics. Photo by: Michael Walker When Najwa Petersen made numerous cellphone calls to her hitmen she was unaware the phones would prove an open book to forensics. Photo by: Michael Walker
A bloody fingerprint found on a doorpost at a murder scene in Argentina in 1892 became the first print ever used to link a criminal to her crime.
And, while fingerprints have put countless criminals behind bars since, investigators are relying on a new kind of “fingerprint” to find - and convict - criminals: cellphones.
Cellphones are like fingerprints - almost everyone has them.
In SA, 1.25 million cellphones are sold each month to 29 million users. And like fingerprints, they have been effective in placing criminals at the scene of a crime.
But cellphones can do more than just place someone somewhere at some point - they can link lawbreakers in the criminal chain. Last year, Deputy Justice Minister Andries Nel said Rica legislation, which made surveillance in suspected criminal cases easier, was paying off.
He said a number of cases “have turned exactly on cellphone evidence, either in terms of the communication between individuals involved in crime, or determining the location of individuals who were involved in crime”.
Advocate Annamart Nieman, who has worked in electronic forensics for the past 12 years, agrees.
Cellphone evidence, she said, was “without a doubt” a growing field in SA forensics.
And, she added, high profile cases could soon be revisited thanks to advances in cellphone evidence.
Nieman said there were three types of information that could be gathered from phones: content (messages, calls, photos), subscriber information (the information given to service providers) and traffic data, which details when calls were made, from where and to whom.
“Typically, content is more jealously guarded in terms of privacy, particularly when it is intercepted in real time,” said Nieman. And, with the emergence of smartphones, the type of content retrieved has changed from just calls and messages “to your whole life – because that phone is basically a computer”.
The spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority in the Western Cape, Eric Ntabazalila, said cellphone evidence was not used in every case, but “where necessary”.
High profile cases that have effectively used cellphone evidence and secured guilty verdicts include those of: Najwa Petersen, Sheryl Cwele, the New Years Gang, the KZN 26; and a group of three Bloemfontein truck hijackers whose phone movements were tracked together with the truck’s movements to prove their involvement.
Forensic experts from SA’s cellular networks are often called to testify in court cases.
Vodacom’s forensic expert, Petro Heyneke, gave cellphone testimony in two major cases currently on the go - that of Thandi Maqubela, who is accused of murdering her husband, former Acting Judge Patrick Maqubela, and also the trial of the alleged Sunday rapist, Johannes Steyn.
Richard Boorman, of Vodacom, would not comment on the kinds of information obtainable or the number of cases the network had been involved in, but detailed the process required to collect cellphone evidence: “Information requests must go via the relevant law enforcement agency to a designated judge. If the judge approves the request, Vodacom is served with a subpoena to provide the information, or provide the facility to monitor the cellphone.”
Nieman said it was vital that the correct procedures were followed in the search and seizure of phones, as well as in the interception of content, because failure to stick to the rules could render the evidence worthless.
“If you’re intercepting information in real time, the rules will be different to just a regular search and seizure,” Nieman said.
Using geographic information systems, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) has been helping police track and map crimes and cellphone use since 1999.
Their first collaboration was in the trial of members of the New Years Gang, who were linked to a string of robberies, hijackings, rape and a murder in Cape Town in January 1998. Using maps, the CSIR was able to show communication between members of the gang and their proximity to crime scenes. The gang members were found guilty and each received life sentences.
Earlier this year, the KZN 26, a gang of 26 who pulled off the country’s biggest cash-in-transit heists in KZN, was found guilty after cellphone calls were analysed.
Expert Thereza Botha painstakingly studied 72 000 calls, eventually finding links between all the accused. She spent 14 days on the witness stand, detailing her findings.
“The cellphone records of the accused played a major, if not definitive, role,” said Judge Jan Combrink, handing down his guilty verdict.
When Cape Town musician Taliep Petersen was murdered in 2006, his wife Najwa claimed she had taken heavy medication and had gone to sleep on the night of his death. But cellphone evidence, presented by Peter Schmitz of the CSIR, showed that she had moved between rooms in the house.
Different cellphone towers in the area picked up her movements as she made calls. The evidence also tracked calls made between Najwa and her co-accused.
It was exactly what the State needed to back up the testimony of Fahiem Hendricks, who had helped organise the hit and who turned State witness in the trial.
Judge Siraj Desai ruled that the cellphone records created “compelling corroboration of the State’s case”.
In other words, in Najwa’s case, the “bloody fingerprint” was not found on the doorpost, but in Najwa’s cellphone records instead. - Sunday Argus