FRIDAY, 5.00PM
TREVOR TUTU, the son of truth commission chairman Archbishop Desmond Tutu, was on Friday arrested by members of the Soweto Fraud Unit at his home in Randburg north of Johannesburg.
Police said Tutu was arrested on the strength of an arrest warrant issued against him for contempt of court arising from his failure to comply with bail conditions set when he was sentenced in 1993 in the East London Magistrate’s Court for a contravention of the Civil Aviation Act. Tutu will be taken to East London to face charges against him, “where it will be decided whether he should serve his sentence or not,” said police Captain Sipho Ngubane.
Soweto police spokesman Superintendent Govindsamy Mariemuthoo said before the arrest on Friday morning that Tutu’s attorneys had contacted police, saying their client would hand himself over to the East London fraud squad next week. Mariemuthoo said as a result police had dropped the arrest warrant against him. Ngubane denied this.
Tutu was to have started a three-and-a-half year prison sentence in September 1993 after his appeal against conviction for making a bomb threat in East London in 1989 failed. He has eluded police since then. He was out on bail of R10 000.