A man has been charged with 76
counts of murder and 86 counts of attempted murder for allegedly causing a fire
at an apartment building in South Africa last year that was one of the country’s
worst disasters.
A man was charged with 76 counts
of murder and 86 counts of attempted murder on Thursday for allegedly causing a
deadly fire at an apartment building in South Africa last year that was one of
the country's worst disasters.
Prosecutors said he made a
written confession in which he admitted starting the nighttime fire that ripped
through the five-story building in Johannesburg in August, killing 76 people
and leaving dozens injured.
The suspect, Sithembiso Lawrence
Mdlalose, was also charged with arson and was ordered to be kept in police
custody until a hearing next month when his lawyer is expected to say if he
will apply for bail.
He faces a possible sentence of
life in prison. South Africa has no death penalty.
Mdlalose's lawyer, Dumisani
Mabunda, said he has received a copy of the confession and believes his client
made it voluntarily.
Mdlalose appeared in the
Johannesburg courtroom for Thursday's hearing but didn't enter a plea in
response to the charges. He mostly spoke to his lawyer during the hearing.
Mabunda said Mdlalose had not yet
indicated to him how he was going to plead in response to the charges.
Mdlalose was arrested on Tuesday
after making a startling claim at a separate inquiry that he was responsible
for the fire. That inquiry is looking into the causes of the fire and the
failures in safety protocols that led to so many people dying. Mladalose was
testifying as a resident of the building.
But he unexpectedly told the
inquiry that he was a drug user and set the fire that night while trying to
hide the body of a man he had killed in the basement of the building. He said
he had strangled the man and then poured gasoline over his body and set it
alight with a match on the instructions of a Tanzanian drug dealer who also
lived in the building.
Prosecutors said Mdlalose's
confession at the inquiry could not be used in his trial because that ongoing
inquiry is not a criminal proceeding.
They said he had since made a
written confession in front of a judge and they had begun their own
investigations.
The Aug. 31 fire happened at a
building that was owned by the city of Johannesburg but had effectively been
abandoned by authorities and was being run by illegal landlords who were
charging people to live there.
Hundreds lived in the building,
many of them in wooden shacks and other temporary structures strewn through the
interior. People were living in the basement and in bathrooms, officials said.
Fire hoses and extinguishers had
been removed and fire escapes were locked or chained closed, emergency
responders said.
Many of the injured jumped out of
windows and suffered broken limbs and backs, health officials said.
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