Namibian police arrested on New Year’s Day a fugitive South African businessman who fled to the United States five years ago to avoid jail for the death of a striking worker, a spokesperson said on Monday.
They arrested Louis George Rademeyer at Cape Cross, a remote resort about 500km north-west of the capital, Windhoek, where he had gone for a holiday, police spokesperson Inspector Stefan Nuuyi said.
“Rademeyer is held in custody in Windhoek and briefly appeared in court this morning [Monday] and the process for his extradition is under way,” he said.
Skipped the country
South African police had worked with Namibia to apprehend him, he said.
“Our South African colleagues informed us before Christmas that they had found out he travelled from the US to Namibia and we checked for his name at Namibia’s entry points and found that he arrived in December 19 for a holiday.”
Rademeyer, a businessman from Kuruman in the Northern Cape, skipped the country in 2006 and headed to the US after being convicted for culpable homicide and public violence two years earlier.
He and seven other people were found guilty regarding the death in 1995 of a council worker when striking South African Municipal Workers’ Union members clashed with business people during protest marches.
Rademeyer fled to America a few days before his jail time was due to start in 2006 after an unsuccessful appeal against his sentence. — AFP