Court intervention sought to obtain documents from Mauritius

The Scorpions were due to file papers today to petition a Durban judge to ask Mauritian authorities to hand over several documents they believe can prove former deputy president Jacob Zuma took an arms-deal bribe.

At the same time, the state has ducked Zuma's challenge to say whether it intends to prosecute him on corruption charges, saying it is "impossible to predict".

In the ongoing exchange of papers between the state, Zuma and his former co-accused - French company Thint - in the legal wrangle over documents being held in Mauritius, Zuma said he was entitled to know whether and when he would be charged again.

But in his reply, investigating officer Isak du Plooy, of the Scorpions, said only: "I can confirm that no decision has been taken regarding the prosecution. The matter of the search warrant appeals remains unresolved. It is impossible to predict when a decision will be made."

The state handed its final replying papers to defence lawyers on Friday and was expected to formally file them with the Durban High Court today. The matter is expected to be argued before KwaZulu Natal's Deputy Judge President, Philip Levinsohn, in the Pietermaritzburg High Court on March 22.

At issue are several documents being held under court injunction in Mauritius which the state believes are crucial to any possible future prosecution of Zuma and Thint.

They include the diary of Alain Thetard, Thint's former South African chief executive, which allegedly notes a meeting between him, Zuma and Zuma's former financial adviser, Schabir Shaik, in March 2000. The state believes it was at this meeting that Thint's alleged bribe to Zuma was brokered.

The diary was seized in a raid on Thint's Mauritian offices in 2000. Copies were made, which were later used at Shaik's trial. In the interim, Thint secured a court order in Mauritius, preventing their disclosure to any other party.

The state had made an application for a judge to issue a letter of request to the Mauritian attorney-general for the release of the originals of the documents "for further investigation".

Both Thint and Zuma have raised mainly technical arguments to this and say the state should never have had copies of the documents in the first place, and the lead prosecutor, advocate Billy Downer, was aware of this when he had received and removed copies.

Du Plooy has denied this and said the court in the Shaik trial had already determined this issue and found that the court order granted at the time permitted copies to be taken.

Referring to allegations by Zuma that the state had adopted a "win at all costs" attitude towards prosecuting him - evidenced by Downer "triumphantly flourishing copies of the papers" back in SA - Du Plooy said this was not true.

He said a newspaper clipping, in French, with a photograph of Downer, identified him simply by name and rank.

"I am advised that he at no stage produced the documents in public and, still less, triumphantly flourished them."

With acknowledgement to Tania Broughton and The Star.