{"id":254848,"date":"2023-03-25T19:23:42","date_gmt":"2023-03-25T17:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.groundup.org.za\/article\/government-admits-thabo-bester-has-escaped\/"},"modified":"2023-03-25T19:23:42","modified_gmt":"2023-03-25T17:23:42","slug":"government-admits-thabo-bester-has-escaped","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.myza.co.za\/press\/government-admits-thabo-bester-has-escaped\/","title":{"rendered":"Government admits Thabo Bester has escaped"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Thabo Bester as illustrated by Lisa Nelson<\/p>\n

The Department of Correctional Services (DCS) has admitted that the \u2018Facebook rapist\u2019 Thabo Bester escaped from prison.<\/p>\n

Bester was serving a life sentence for rape and murder in Mangaung Correctional Centre, a maximum security prison operated by G4S, a multinational company. He was initially reported to have have set himself alight and died in a prison cell on 3 May 2022.<\/p>\n

In November 2022, GroundUp began publishing reports noticing anomalies with the official version of events, and delays in the investigation into Bester\u2019s supposed death.<\/p>\n

In our first report<\/a> we wrote:<\/p>\n

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\u201cAt this stage the possibilities are<\/p>\n

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  1. the body is Bester\u2019s and he killed himself by fire;<\/li>\n
  2. it is Bester and he died in an accidental fire;<\/li>\n
  3. it is Bester and he died in a fire set by someone else;<\/li>\n
  4. it is Bester and he was murdered before the fire; or<\/li>\n
  5. it was not Bester who died, and Bester might have escaped.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Possibility 5 is the most unlikely, but without a proper investigation none of these possibilities can be excluded.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

    Frankly, we naively believed possibility 5 to be entirely far-fetched and absurd.<\/p>\n

    But as we investigated further it became increasingly clear that Bester had escaped, almost certainly with substantial help from prison personnel.<\/p>\n

    On 15 March we published<\/a> the evidence supporting the theory that he escaped:<\/p>\n