Africa-Press – South-Africa. Lesotho’s prosecuting authority has dropped murder charges against the kingdom’s former prime minister Tom Thabane and his wife Maesiah, over the killing of the former’s estranged wife Lipolelo Thabane.
A lawyer representing the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), advocate Garreth Lapan, told the high court in the capital Maseru that “we have been unable to trace an important witness in this matter and the DPP has decided to withdraw the charges against the accused”.
The two was suspected of having masterminded the shooting that left Thabane’s second wife Lipolelo dead, and her friend Thato Sibolla seriously injured, in June 2017, just days before Thabane’s inauguration.
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The estranged couple were at the time embroiled in a bitter divorce battle that meant Lipolelo would have been the official “First Lady”, a situation that allegedly upset Maesiah.
Thabane was charged in November 2021 alongside Maesiah, who had become his wife just months after the inauguration, and four other suspects.
Police believed the pair paid hitmen who called Thabane’s cellphone from the scene around the time of the shooting. However, they have both maintained their innocence.
Thabane was forced to step down in May 2020 after the first charges were brought against Maesiah in February 2020
One of the key witnesses – Rethabile Mokete, a well-known traditional musician – died from a suspected Covid-19 in Bloemfontein in January 2021.
Known as Mosotho Chakela, Mokete had fled the kingdom after police called him in for questioning over the murder.
He was instrumental in the formation of Thabane’s political party All Basotho Convention (ABC) in 2006, but later defected to the Democratic Congress (DC).
Mokete had claimed that Thabane and party leaders had failed to reward him for his “sacrifices” and threatened to “air dirty laundry” about the secrets of Maesiah Thabane and former police and public security minister ’Mampho Mokhele.
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