By John Ikani
Police in Tanzania have arrested Thabo Bester, a rapist and murderer who escaped from a South African prison by faking his own death.
Bester had been on the run for over a year after it was thought he had died by self-immolation in his prison cell.
He had been on the run for a year after a post-mortem revealed that the body found in his prison cell was not his own.
Bester was apprehended on Friday with his girlfriend and a third person and will be extradited back to South Africa.
Authorities believe that the group was planning to escape to neighbouring Kenya.
Bester earned the nickname “Facebook Rapist” for using the social networking site to lure his victims.
He was sentenced to jail in 2012 for the rape and murder of his model girlfriend Nomfundo Tyhulu, and a year earlier, for raping and robbing two other women.
Initially, reports suggested that Bester had died after setting himself on fire in May of last year in the Mangaung Correctional Centre in Bloemfontein.
However, doubts emerged, and police launched a new investigation after conducting further tests, revealing that the body found was not his and that the deceased had suffered blunt-force trauma to the head.
Several reports had claimed to have spotted Bester in various locations, including one in which he was seen grocery shopping in an upscale Johannesburg neighbourhood, where he was supposedly renting a mansion.
The escape of Bester caused significant public outrage in South Africa, where sexual assault rates are among the highest in the world.
The British-owned security company G4S, which ran the prison where Bester was held, has been accused of assisting him in his escape.
Although three employees were dismissed in connection with the incident, G4S did not attend a parliamentary meeting to discuss the escape.
