A fistfight broke out when Interpol officials and the Tanzanian police nabbed South Africa’s most wanted fugitives Thabo Bester and his lover Dr Nandipha Magudumana alongside their Mozambican aide.
Bester and his accomplices, who were en route to Kenya in their cross-border escapade, came out second-best in the physical scuffle on Friday night close to the border.
Moments earlier, the trio had attempted to evade law enforcement officials in a high-speed chase but later abandoned their getaway car and tried to flee on foot. However, the authorities stayed on their tracks and eventually caught up with them.
The three suspects were arrested between the cities of Dar es Salaam and Arusha in Tanzania just before midnight on Friday. Arusha is 10km from the Kenyan border.
Insiders in the high echelons of the South African police, who know the details of the coveted arrest, said when Interpol and Tanzanian police pounced, the trio pulled a spirited attempt to resist arrest.
But how were Bester, Magudumana and their Mozambican friend spotted?
Sources said the cops followed a suspicious black SUV with three occupants on board.
“These three people were followed from the hotel in Dar es Salaam while driving out to Arusha en route to Kenya. Upon realising they were being followed, they tried to flee. This is where a high-speed chase ensued. These people jumped out of their car and ran on foot, but they were apprehended,” said an intelligence source.
Another high-ranking police official in the know told Sunday World the cops wanted to know why Bester, Magudumana, and the Mozambican national were trying to escape.
“They were asked why they had tried to run away, and upon searching the car, the police found multiple passports bearing different names of the trio.
“They tried to sweet-talk the police but when they realise that they were not being listened to, they started being hostile and became arrogant. They refused to be arrested and the police had to rough them up to enforce authority,” said a police source.
Sunday World can reveal the police have moved mountains in their search for Bester since he escaped from Mangaung private prison last year.
Some of the extreme measures the authorities undertook included a counter to Magudumana’s claim for a corpse that she alleged was Bester’s body.
It has since emerged Magudumana claimed another two bodies, one of which she insisted was her father’s remains.
Our sources yesterday revealed that Magudumana’s father is very much alive and “he was in fact taken for intensive interrogation in the early hours of Saturday”.
In her daring act of claiming the bodies of living people, Magudumana sent cops on a wild goose chase that saw them digging “multiple graves” to disprove her claims.
A top cop said this proves Magudumana was a willing participant since the beginning. “The doctor was not just an innocent person who got coerced into a crime,” said our mole.
“We were not crazy when we denied her access to the body she claimed was of Mr Bester, we knew she was involved in a crime.”
In a press briefing organised in haste yesterday, minister of police Bheki Cele, his correctional services and justice counterpart Ronald Lamola, as well as police commissioner General Fannie Masemola, vowed that Bester and Magudumana would be brought to justice.
A South African delegation from the government’s security cluster will jet off to Tanzania today to discuss how the two can be brought back home. Once they are in the country the two will be under the watchful eye of highly trained warders at the Kgosi Mampuru prison in Pretoria, Sunday World was told.
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