The police in South Africa stated on Wednesday that that they had arrested a person who confessed to beginning a fire in a derelict Johannesburg building final August that killed dozens of individuals, a few of whom leaped to their deaths or have been trapped behind locked safety gates.
The 29-year-old man was arrested on Tuesday on 76 counts of homicide and 120 counts of tried homicide, stated Col. Dimakatso Nevhuhulwi, a spokeswoman for the police in Gauteng Province, which incorporates Johannesburg. The person’s identify has not been launched.
Officers initially stated that the fireplace, which tore by means of an overcrowded four-story constructing within the early hours of Aug. 31, had killed 77 individuals. However a fee investigating the catastrophe was later informed that the quantity was unsure due to how badly a number of the our bodies have been burned.
The fireplace focused international attention on lots of of rundown, illegally occupied buildings in Johannesburg just like the one which burned, the place poor households who can’t afford safer housing have settled. These city squatter camps are generally known as “hijacked” buildings as a result of they’re usually taken over by gangs that deal medicine and extort residents for lease funds.
The 29-year-old man was arrested after testifying on Tuesday earlier than the fee investigating the fireplace. The fee’s hearings have been live-streamed, however the man testified behind closed doorways out of concern that gang leaders who had been working out of the constructing would have him killed, the fee’s lead lawyer stated.
“His life could also be in peril if made public,” the lawyer, Ishmael Semenya, stated throughout a public portion of the listening to.
The police didn’t present particulars in regards to the man’s reported confession. In line with South African information retailers, he stated in his testimony on Tuesday that he had strangled a person, poured gasoline over the physique and set hearth to it, and that the fireplace had unfold.
These killed within the blaze included at the least a dozen youngsters — two of them toddlers named Memory — migrants from different African nations and other people holding down jobs as academics and technicians. Neighbors and residents stated the constructing additionally housed prison gangs that offered medicine on the sidewalk and robbed passers-by.
The federal government owned the constructing and lots of others prefer it. Going block by block and looking information, New York Times reporters last year identified at least 127 similar buildings, neglected death traps, within the heart of Johannesburg.
President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated that the fireplace was a “wake-up name” for South Africa, the place the price of residing places housing out of attain for a lot of, and the place metropolis governments look the opposite means as individuals occupy garbage-strewn buildings with out water or electrical energy.
The fee investigating the fireplace halted its work final 12 months after the constructing that housed it was itself deemed to be a fireplace hazard. Its hearings resumed this month.
