Witness had sex 'to help libel action by friend'

A CHILDHOOD friend of Jani Allan, a South African journalist who is suing Channel 4 Television, told the High Court in London yesterday how he slept with her former flatmate to try to get information to help her libel action action against the company.

Andrew Broulidakis, 31, said he had lunch then sexual intercourse with Linda Shaw, who once shared a Johannesburg flat with Miss Allan. His object, he said, was to try to find out why she was alleging that she saw Miss Allan through a keyhole having sexual intercourse with Eugene Terre-Blanche, the South African neo-Nazi leader, as two bodyguards looked on. He tape-recorded the lunch, but the tape ran out before they went to bed.

Mr Broulidakis said he believed there was a conspiracy to discredit Miss Allan, involving, among others, the South African government and Miss Shaw, although he conceded he had no evidence for that belief.

Miss Allan, 40, who now lives at Hampton Court, Surrey, is suing Channel 4 Television over a film, The Leader, His Driver and the Driver's Wife, which she claims portrayed her as a 'lady of easy virtue', who slept with Mr Terre- Blanche, leader of the extreme right-wing AWB party.

The company says it never suggested an affair and argues that such an allegation, although never made, would be justified because Miss Allan did have an affair with Mr Terre-Blanche, who is married and has a young daughter.

George Carman QC, cross- examining Mr Broulidakis for the television company, asked: 'Do you normally have sex with women in order to get information out of them?'

He replied: 'Not normally, no.'

'Do you normally have sex with women and conceal tapes on you to record what they are saying?'

'No.'

'Do you normally tell lies to women in order to persuade them to have sex with you.'

'Not normally, no.' In this case the end had justified the means, Mr Broulidakis told the court.

He said that Miss Allan knew he was trying to get information out of Miss Shaw, but not the way he was doing it. Having sexual intercourse with Miss Shaw had not been foremost in his mind when he set off to meet her.

Asked about his moral position, as a Christian, he said: 'I believed that evil was being done. Miss Allan was the victim of evil forces. I saw myself as doing what any other decent human being would have done - albeit you make it sound as terrible as it does.'

Earlier, Charles Gray, for Miss Allan, had read out written evidence from her former husband, Gordon Schachat, from whom she was divorced in 1984 after two years of marriage.

Mr Schachat, who remains good friends with Miss Allan, said their marriage broke up because of her 'total obsession with her career' and because of her lack of interest in sex.

He said: 'I do not think she has a normal approach to sex and her sexy public image is totally at odds with her real personality, which is in effect shy, withdrawn, and quite anti-social. She has an inability to form relationships.' He insisted that she was not an extreme right- winger, nor anti-Semitic.

The case continues today.