Three days after Thabo Bester and his star-crossed lover Dr Nandipha Magudumana were arrested in Tanzania, more suspects linked to their daring escape were taken into custody.
Thabo Bester and Dr Nandipha arrests: Here are the latest updates
On Monday, police confirmed that a former G4S employee and a 65-year-old man were arrested this past weekend and charged with “aiding and abetting a convicted prisoner to escape from lawful custody.”
The two males, aged 39 and 65, respectively, were taken into custody in separate raids. The former G4S employee, police revealed, was arrested at his residence in Bloemfontein, while a task team in KwaZulu-Natal (KZN) nabbed an elderly suspect believed to be Dr Nandipha’s father, Zolile Sekeleni, at his home in Port Edward.
It’s believed the suspect’s names surfaced during investigations into Bester’s daring escape from Mangaung Correctional Centre, a G4S-managed facility, in May 2022.
In particular, authorities are interested in the roles each suspect played in smuggling a corpse into prison and creating the grand distraction that helped Bester slip out of the corrections service’s grasp.
According to Police Minister Bheki Cele, the suspects will also be probed on murder since an autopsy performed on the charred corpse determined the John Doe died before he was burned.
“It does look like a very blunt kind of instrument was used to hit that person. That’s why the police at the present moment are investigating a case of murder. We will allow them to continue to find what really happened and who the person is,” Cele said.
The two suspects are expected to appear before the Bloemfontein Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, 11 April 2023.
It remains unclear, at this stage, if more arrests from G4S will be announced since Justice Minister Ronald Lamola confirmed, during a press briefing on the capture of Bester and Dr Nandipha, that were multiple suspects “implicated from G4S in terms of the investigative report that we have.”
Minister Lamola is expected to provide a blow-by-blow account of how Bester escaped at a portfolio committee meeting on Wednesday, 12 April 2023.
At this stage of the Thabo Bester saga, South Africans wait with bated breath on movements taking shape in Arusha, where a delegation team is in talks with Tanzania’s government on the extradition of the fugitive couple.