4/19/2023 0 Comments Escape from pretoria![]() In her founding affidavit, Magudumana argued that as Bester’s customary law wife, she had the burial rights, and indicated that she wanted an independent autopsy to be conducted to determine the cause of death. The court has not yet made a final ruling on the matter. She also asked the court for a declaratory order entitling her to bury Bester. Magudumana approached the Pretoria High Court on 19 May, requesting that the body be returned to her. Further investigations were then conducted on the body. She took the body to a mortuary in Soweto, but it was confiscated by police upon instruction from the investigating officer in Mangaung. She has 124,000 Instagram followers and was named one of the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans in 2018. Magudumana runs a cosmetics surgery company called Optimum Medical Aesthetic Solutions. Three days after the fire, on, Magudumana collected Bester’s body from the state morgue in Mangaung, claiming to be Bester’s customary law wife. Ten months later, investigations by the South African Police Service (SAPS), the Department of Correctional Services (DCS), and the Judicial Inspectorate for Correctional Services (JICS), are still incomplete. A woman who said she is Bester’s biological mother then tried to claim the body, but her DNA did not match the body’s. But after the autopsy, the police confiscated the body for further investigations. After the autopsy, the police docket relating to the matter was changed from suicide to murder.īester’s “customary law” wife, celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana, claimed the body from the mortuary shortly after the fire. The whole body was charred, and the hands and face were particularly badly burned. The post-mortem report also noted a “strong smell of accelerant (paraffin)” from the body’s trachea and bronchi. (While this is suspicious, a forensic pathologist told GroundUp that it is possible for a pathologist to underestimate the height of a burnt body.) But in a police mugshot, Bester stood taller, at just over 1.7m. The body’s height at the time of the autopsy was 1.45m. According to the post-mortem report, which we have seen, the person was killed by a blunt force injury to the head. In January, we revealed that the person whose body was found in the cell was dead before the fire broke out. GroundUp has learnt that in the early hours of the morning of the fire, people were seen on CCTV cameras hastily exiting the prison. In 2012, he was sentenced to life imprisonment for these crimes. He would then rape them and rob them using a knife. ![]() A fire had broken out and a body was found under a burnt mattress.īester became known as the “Facebook rapist” because he used the social media platform to lure women with claims that international modelling scouts were interested in them. On, the Department of Correctional Services announced that Bester was found dead in his cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre, a maximum security private prison operated by multinational security company G4S. GroundUp has uncovered new evidence that reveals suspicious circumstances in the prison fire thought to have killed “Facebook rapist” Thabo Bester. ![]() A woman who says she is Bester’s biological mother also tried to claim the body, but her DNA did not match the body’s.Celebrity doctor Nandipha Magudumana collected the body, claiming to be Bester’s wife, but the body was later confiscated by police.The autopsy report revealed the person was dead before the fire broke out. ![]() ![]() After the fire, a body was found in the cell, burned beyond recognition under the mattress.Minutes before a fire broke out in Thabo Bester’s prison cell at the Mangaung Correctional Centre, CCTV cameras observed people hastily leaving the prison.He is evidently based on the Egyptian-born French national, Alex Moumbaris, with whom the men actually broke out, although it isn’t clear why his character has been fictionalised and the others not.Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein. Inside, Jenkin and Lee meet another political prisoner and future escaper: Frenchman Leonard Fontaine (a slightly hammy turn from Mark Leonard Winter). Their prison is tough, but as they are white, it is not as tough it might have been. With long hair and straggly beard, Daniel Radcliffe plays Jenkin and Daniel Webber plays his fellow ANC activist Stephen Lee, imprisoned in 1978 for their “leaflet bombs” – firecracker-type devices left in the street which send blizzards of leaflets flying. The film has something pleasingly traditional about it, with tense nailbiting moments, slab-faced guards, and touches of The Great Escape and Papillon. T he rather amazing true story of the white ANC activist Tim Jenkin and his audacious escape from Pretoria Prison in apartheid-era South Africa is told in this capable and well-carpentered movie from British film-maker Francis Annan, adapted from Jenkin’s own book. ![]()
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