A rapist and murderer who escaped from a South African prison by faking his own death has been arrested in Tanzania.
Thabo Bester went into hiding for a year after he was believed to have died in a fire in his prison.
A manhunt was launched last month after a new post-mortem revealed the body was not actually his.
Bester, along with his girlfriend and a third suspect, were caught on Friday and will be extradited to South Africa.
The police said that the three were planning to flee to neighboring Kenya.
Bester is known as the “Facebook Rapist” for using the social networking site to lure his victims.
In 2012, he was convicted of the rape and murder of his model girlfriend, Nomfundo Tyhulu. A year ago, he was found guilty of raping and robbing two other women.
In May, he was reported dead in his cell at Mangaung Correctional Center in the city of Bloemfontein after setting himself on fire.
However, local media began raising doubts about Bestor’s death late last year.
In March, police opened a new homicide investigation after further tests revealed the deceased was not Bester — and that the unidentified man died of blunt-force trauma to the head.
Employees of the British-owned security company G4S, which ran the prison where he was held, allegedly helped him escape.
It said three employees were fired in connection with the incident.
Earlier this week, representatives of the organization failed to attend a meeting in Parliament about Bestor’s escape. The BBC has contacted G4S for comment.
Several sightings of Bester have been reported over the past year, with claims that he was grocery shopping in an affluent suburb of Johannesburg and lived in a rented house there.
Bester’s escape sparked outrage in South Africa, which has one of the highest rates of sexual violence in the world.
Source: BBC
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