Kebble's father, Roger, allegedly knew of the suicide plans, says Clinton Nassif. Photo: Chris Collingridge, The Star

Clinton Nassif, a key witness in the Brett Kebble murder trial, dropped two major bombshells when he took the stand on Thursday.

In his sensational evidence-in-chief, the man who was head of Kebble’s security revealed for the first time:

“We were at Brett’s house… around the dinner table. He said that if he didn’t do this (suicide), he’ll end in a mental institution. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing” Nassif told the court.

Over dinner, Kebble, Nassif, Agliotti and Stratton discussed several ways to kill Kebble, including a shooting outside his house or restaurant, a hijacking hit in the street or by using a tablet that would induce a heart attack.

The tablet had to be composed in a way that it could not be traceable when a post-mortem was conducted, Nassif said.

“I didn’t understand what was happening. When I told Mikey (Schultz), he said Kebble was mad. I thought so too,” Nassif said.

According to Nassif, Roger Kebble was equally shocked when he was told of his son’s impending suicide, to which Nassif alerted him.

Nassif testified that this upset Kebble because his father had reprimanded him. Despite this, Nassif said he was called to another meeting where Kebble’s death was discussed.

“I met with Brett and Glenn again and they gave me the different scenarios of how it should happen. The first one was a shooting at his house, then a shooting down the road which had to be made to look like a hijacking, then a shooting outside a restaurant,” he said.

Payments for the R2 million job were to come from Stratton through Agliotti, Nassif said.

During the night of the first attempt, a “very angry” Nigel McGurk phoned Nassif to find out why Agliotti was calling him about the shooting. McGurk testified that Agliotti had phoned to tell him to “call the boys off”.

“The next morning, I told McGurk that Glenn and I worked together… We are in this thing together,” he said.

Nassif said Agliotti had called to find out where the hitmen were after they failed to pitch up for the scheduled hit.

“I received a call from Glenn around 8pm, asking ‘where are those guys… they haven’t pitched’. He said his phone was ringing off the hook with Brett calling him nonstop,” Nassif said.

When Nassif called Schultz following Agliotti’s call, he said “there was a problem… he’ll explain in the morning”.

The problem related to an overheating car that caused the men to abort the hit at the last minute, leaving Kebble to drive around Melrose looking for them, Schultz told the court this week.

Nassif testified that he was introduced to Kebble and Stratton by Agliotti, the man he saw daily and played golf with between 2003 and 2005.

Kebble and Stratton wanted him to conduct surveillance work for them, and it was during one of their meetings that he was given “a list of people causing problems” for the two businessmen.

One of the people on the list was Stephen Mildenhall, a former Allan Gray auditor who was shot three times at his Cape Town home in August 2005. “At the time, Glenn and I decided we were not going to kill any of those people, so we spun stories,” said Nassif.

But once at a meeting at Stratton’s Cape Town home, Stratton had “pushed a sushi knife at me, saying that this has to be done now”, he said.

When he returned to Joburg, Agliotti told him “the guys are really anxious, they want us to do something about it… Take him (Stratton) out of the system for about three to six months,” he said.

This corroborated evidence given by Schultz, McGurk and Faizel “Kappie” Smith that they had been instructed by Nassif to go to Cape Town and “put the guy in hospital”.

Defence advocate Laurance Hodes SC tore into his evidence, saying he had implicated Agliotti in Kebble’s murder in order to have a fraud charge dismissed. But Nassif dismissed the statement as “absolute rubbish”.