Brothers fight to avoid joining heist crew in jail

Seven years after the R100-million OR Tambo international airport heist, the trial of the last two accused is nearing its end.

Brothers Rooshdeen and Shaheed Rudolph, a lawyer and an IT specialist respectively, are accused of being part of the gang that robbed a plane arriving from London.

The brothers' co-accused were convicted last year .

In 2009, the two men failed in a court bid to have the charges against them dropped.

Argument in the case ended yesterday, with the court postponing judgment to next month.

The brothers' lawyer, Stephan van Rensburg, spent most of yesterday attempting to paint the state's main witnesses - Sean Soobramoney and Nazir Ishmail - as "unreliable" and "untrustworthy.

"They are self-confessed criminals and liars. They were, and are still, liars," he said, adding that the two would do anything to get out of jail.

Their 20-year prison sentences were conditionally suspended for five years in 2008.

He also told the court that Soobramoney's testimony was inadmissible because Soobramoney had claimed it was secured by torture.

Earlier, prosecutor Willemien Vos told the court that the Rudolph brothers were introduced to Soobramoney and Ishmail by Christopher Billings, who was sentenced to 22 years in jail last year.

Vos said the brothers were not present at the robbery but had helped to plan it.

Vos said that Rooshdeen's sporadic visits to Johannesburg in 2005, while he was living in Cape Town, indicated that he played a constant part in the planning of the heist.