Experts in extradition law say proceedings to return the two murder suspects arrested in eSwatini after a year-old investigation into the murders of Kiernan “AKA” Forbes and his friend Tebello “Tibz” Motsoane, should be quick, but this could take up to a year in the worst case scenario.
The SA Police Service (SAPS) have arrested seven men for the February 10, 2023 murder of the award-winning rapper and famed celebrity chef. Five of the seven are in custody in South Africa, while two were still under custody in neighbouring eSwatini.
Director and head of projects at Accountability Now, advocate Paul Hoffman said extradition requests could take up to a year to resolve, but he said it was possible in this case that the outcome could be rapid.
“Extradition would usually take about a year,” said Hoffman.
Hoffman said the SAPS and South African government needed to convince the eSwatini authorities and justify why the suspects were in the country.
“They need to convince them that the murder charges justify the extradition of the two arrested suspects to South Africa because the murders took place in the country,” Hoffman told IOL.
He said extradition processes can be complex and time-consuming, but said in cases like this, it was possible to fast-track them.
The University of KwaZulu-Natal’s associate professor of law, Karthy Govender, who is also a former SA Human Rights Commissioner, also told IOL News that such cases usually take time, but given the cordial relationship between Mbabane and Pretoria, the matter might be sped up.
Govender highlighted the Shepherd Bushiri case with Malawi, and said it was an indication of how complex the extradition process could get in the worst case scenarios.
Although relations between Mbabane and Pretoria are cordial, the KZN provincial police commissioner Lieutenant-General Nhlanhla Mkhwanazi had criticism for the Eswatini authorities about how they handled the matter of the arrests.
Mkhwanazi accused the authorities in Eswatini of passing on information to the media, instead of engaging with authorities in Pretoria first.
Mkhwanazi said they would have wanted to keep the arrests a secret so that the case could not jeopardised. He said as a result of the Eswatini media reports, two identified suspects tried to escape. They have both since been arrested by the SAPS in KZN.
“I like the South African media because you tend to understand that you can’t be talking about things that are still in court especially when the individual has not been charged,” he said.
The police confirmed this week that Tibz was caught in the line of fire, and that the gunmen had intended to execute AKA in his minibus.
Mkhwanazi told reporters that extradition procedures would be started.
The SAPS top brass stressed that they were the ones who informed the authorities in eSwatini and Interpol, to assist with the arrests of the suspects.
The two states, through the Southern African Development Community (SADC), have an agreement on extradition to address matters of such a nature.
Both South Africa and eSwatini have ratified the SADC Protocol on Extradition, meaning it legally binds them. The countries have respective domestic laws that govern the implementation of this protocol.
According to the protocol, extradition between South Africa and eSwatini could occur for crimes such as murder, corruption, fraud, drug trafficking, and other serious offences that meet the extraditable offence criteria.
Five suspects are expected to appear in the Durban Magistrate’s Court on Thursday.
IOL Politics