The man allegedly behind bizarre internet sex claims against prominent South Africans will probably be transferred from Kroonstad to Cape Town sometime this week, said police.
Juan Duval Uys (39) was arrested at the home he shared with his mother in Kroonstad on Saturday after a months-long investigation reportedly involving eBlockwatch, private investigators and the public.
The arrest was made on a warrant issued on a charge relating to fraud registered at Table Bay Harbour police station in Cape Town, said Superintendent Eugene Opperman.
He said information about Uys’s whereabouts in Kroonstad was conveyed to Gauteng police, who sent it to their counterparts in the Free State. ”They arrested him,” he said.
Uys is accused of running the blog SA Male Prostitute on which he posed as a former male prostitute called Skye, named 16 prominent South Africans as his clients and threatened to name all 50 he claimed to have had sex with in the past 10 years.
According to the Sunday Times, he also claimed a guard of President Thabo Mbeki was a client and threatened to reveal private information about the president, raising the interest of the National Intelligence Agency.
Rapport described him as a ”chameleon with various identities”.
Police spokesperson Captain Elliot Sinyangana said on Sunday that Cape Town detectives were in Johannesburg on an investigation and would probably stop off in Kroonstad to pick up Uys on their way back on Monday or Tuesday.
Only once he was back in Cape Town would it be decided when he would appear in court.
Sinyangana said Cape Town police heard of the arrest for the first time on Saturday and detectives had not yet received any official documentation to this effect from Kroonstad.
As a result, it was known only that he was taken into custody on a warrant of arrest. Details of the exact charge against him were not known.
The Western Cape commercial crime unit had indicated that consultations about his arrest and transfer would take place on Monday.
The Sunday Times reported that Uys was arrested while running a massage parlour in 1999 when it was alleged that he was dealing in child pornography and prostituting under-aged boys.
In 2002, he blamed a ”gay group” within the Democratic Alliance for a spate of sexual harassment allegations against him and claimed he was president of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance, according to the Sunday Independent.
Later that year, he threatened to name and shame ”South Africa’s worst homophobes”, the newspaper added.
In 2006, the Gay and Lesbian Alliance announced that HIV-infected members had donated blood.
The Sunday Times reported that Uys was also thought to be behind the controversial crime website, crime expo SA, which ”featured gruesome reasons for tourists not to visit the country”.
According to Rapport, the website intended to warn visitors to the 2010 Soccer World Cup about crime in South Africa. – Sapa