Recent developments in the trial of Shrien Dewani have already complicated the matter of whether the wealthy businessman is guilty in the murder of his wife, Anni Dewani, while they were honeymooning in Cape Town. First there was conflicting witness testimony among the South African nationals originally convicted of Anni's kidnapping and shooting, then police negligence when Dewani's official police statement from the time could not be found in the records, and now presiding Judge Traverso has ruled his controversial bi-sexual exploits are irrelevant to the case: “Don’t ask a witness who’s a gay escort in the UK to prove something that he cannot possibly have knowledge about” she told the prosecution. “I’m going to stand this witness down.”
This is a huge blow to the state's prosecution, who assert that Dewani staged the killing of his wife because he wanted to escape the constraints of a traditional heterosexual marriage without having to sully his reputation in society. German male escort, Leopold Leisser, who had previously told the court that Dewani liked to be racially abused as part of their relations, was just beginning to elaborate on how Dewani was the first client he had allowed to stay the night, "it was extremely unusual, it was the first ever time... [it’s] usually just a couple of hours", when Traverso intervened. Leisser, who claimed to be paid £18,000 for selling his story to 'The Sun', was forced to close his escort business since his relationship with the accused, has been brought to light.
The atmosphere of the High Court is tense this week as Tongo, the taxi-driver with whom Dewani is said to have arranged the whole murder, begins to tell his version of the events. He has started by saying that Dewani underpaid him for the killing, touching upon another previous weakness in the prosecution's argument where it was questioned why Dewani would pay only 5,000 rand for a killing when the underground 'rate' for killing a foreigner in the townships is well over 100,000.
Leisser has been asked to step down from giving intimate sexual details, but he may remain a valuable witness in giving other observational testimony. He has already claimed to have sent Dewani a text asking if he 'was ok?' after noticing that the businessman had deleted his 'Gaydar' account, which took place just weeks after Anni's death, and has also told the court that he heard Dewani say he wanted out of the engagement during one of their illicit meetings.
