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- A former police colonel who stole police-owned firearms and sold them to Cape Town gangs has apparently been released from prison.
- The man appears to have been photographed shopping at Vereeniging.
- Some of the firearms were linked to the deaths of 89 children and another 170 children were injured.
A former police colonel who stole police-owned firearms and sold them to, among others, Cape Town gangs, has apparently been released from prison after serving less than a third of his sentence.
According to reliable sources, Christiaan Prinsloo, 59, from Vereeniging, was already released in April from the Free State Prison where he was last detained.
Spokespersons for the Department of Correctional Services and the Department of Justice declined to confirm or deny this.
READ | Leakage of confidential information in case of stolen police weapons involving 3028 files
However, if you have been released, it means that you have only served three years and 10 months of your 18-year prison sentence.
Prinsloo was sentenced to 18 years in prison effective June 21, 2016, after pleading guilty in Bellville Regional Court to 11 counts, including racketeering, corruption, money laundering, robbery, illegal possession of firearms, illegal possession of ammunition and sale of ammunition, firearms and spare parts to persons not authorized to possess them. He reached a plea deal with the State.
Photographed while shopping
Sources sent two photos of a man who looks like Prinsloo to Netwerk24 on Friday. They were captured in Vereeniging, Gauteng.
In one photo, the man can be seen walking in a parking lot, dressed in a khaki shirt and sweatpants.
A man believed to be convicted arms dealer Christiaan Prinsloo in a parking lot in Vereeniging.
Network24 supplied
In a second photo, taken on September 19, he is in a store. He is standing at a cash register, paying for a two-liter bottle of milk. The man in the photos is not as skinny as Prinsloo at the time of his court case.
After his sentencing, Prinsloo was initially detained at Obiqua Prison, outside Tulbagh in Boland, Western Cape.
The sources claimed that he was removed from the facility last year, without prior notice to the prison authorities, with a veil of great secrecy and a strong police escort. No one could say where they took him.
READ | Former policeman in gang gun case should be charged with murder: lawyer
Other sources said Friday that he was held in Heidelberg Prison in Gauteng for a period after he was taken from the Western Cape.
He was then reportedly transferred to a prison in the Free State before being released.
READ HERE | Former police officer sentenced to 18 years for stealing and reselling weapons to Cape gangsters
Several inquiries have been sent to the Department of Correctional Services (DCS) and the Department of Justice since September.
On Friday, Logan Maistry, a DCS spokesperson, referred all inquiries to Delekile Klaas, the DCS area commissioner in the Western Cape.
A man who looks like Christiaan Prinsloo pictured in a store in Vereeniging.
Supplied
Klaas did not want to confirm if Prinsloo had been paroled, if there were other arrangements for his release, or why he was apparently seen at Vereeniging.
But according to Klaas, Prinsloo is still in the DCS system and still considers himself a criminal. He said he would not answer questions due to security risks.
“The whole world is looking for this man, inside our jails and outside the jails.”
Inquiries were also sent to the office of the Minister of Justice, Ronald Lamola. His spokesman, Chrispin Phiri, said the ministry did not comment on the incarceration of individual prisoners.
“We will only comment on certain provisions that justify a decision or action by the minister.”
According to court records, Prinsloo and a colleague, who worked with him at the police ammunition store, had stolen more than 2,000 firearms in police possession since 2007 and sold them, among others, to gangs in the Western Cape. .
Weapons used to kill children
By 2016, some of the firearms were linked to the deaths of 89 children and another 170 children were injured. One of the stolen firearms sold to gangs was also ballistically linked to the deaths of 15 people in the Western Cape, including the mother of a Cape Town detective and the son of a retired police general.
Prinsloo said in his plea deal that he and a colleague realized in 2006 that they were sitting on a gold mine. All seized firearms that had to be destroyed were kept there, among other things. From 2007 to January 2015, when he was arrested, they sold firearms to gangs in the Western Cape and other parts of the country.
Earned R2 million from arms sales
He admitted that they would have continued to sell the weapons had they not been captured. The court also heard then that the state had confiscated around R1.2 million from Prinsloo. Prinsloo said he made about R2 million from the arms sale.
Meanwhile, Irshaad Laher, the alleged middleman, and Alan Raves, a Vereeniging firearms dealer, still face criminal charges in court.
Christiaan Prinsloo.
Netwerk24 Ineke Coetzee
Raves’ legal representative told the court in late August, in his last appearance in the Western Cape High Court in Cape Town, that they had submitted an application to the Gauteng High Court in Johannesburg asking that the case in its against be permanently abandoned, or have his case separated from Laher’s and heard in Gauteng.
His legal representative said they were still waiting for a date for the Raves request to be heard.
Laher and Raves face charges of theft, corruption, possession of firearms and ammunition without a license and organized crime.
They are due to appear in court again on February 12 of next year.
Read the original report in Afrikaans here.
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