NATIONAL NEWS - A warrant of arrest for Grace Mugabe, wife of the former Zimbabwe President, Robert, has been put into “the Interpol processes”, say the South African Police Service.
The international policing body will, in the next step, issue a “Red Notice”, which is a request to the policing authorities in a particular country to arrest and detain an individual pending extradition to the country which issued the arrest warrant.
South Africa has an extradition treaty with Zimbabwe, but the executing authority for any arrest warrants is the Zimbabwe Republic Police, an organisation which has, in the past, been stacked with officers loyal to Mugabe and to the ruling Zanu-PF party.
A source in Harare close to Mugabe – who was born in Benoni to Zimbabwean parents – said she would “never set foot again in South Africa”.
Given an Interpol warrant, it was possible that the ex-president’s wife might return to the island state of Singapore, where the couple has been undergoing medical treatment for the past few months. Singapore does not have an extradition treaty with South Africa.
Afrikaner rights group AfriForum announced yesterday in Pretoria that they have managed to put pressure on police and the justice system to have Mugabe prosecuted for allegedly assaulting South African model Gabriella Engels last year.
While Mugabe slipped through the National Prosecuting Authoriy’s (NPA’s) fingers due to a diplomatic immunity, AfriForum’s head of private prosecution, Gerrie Nel, successfully got the immunity scrapped when the organisation took the matter to the High Court in Pretoria earlier this year.
