Husband too ill for extradition hearing over ‘murder plot’

Shrien Dewani, 31, alleged to have ordered the killing of his wife Anni, 28, in Cape Town in November, is said to be suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder.

South African authorities are fighting to have him sent back to the country to face justice but his lawyer, Clare Montgomery QC, argued he was “simply unfit to stand trial”. As his extradition hearing resumed yesterday at Belmarsh Magistrates’ Court in south-east London, she claimed it was “positively inhuman” to keep him in the court room.

District Judge Howard Riddle, who will decide whether the Bristol care home owner should stand trial in South Africa, said: “At least four experts have agreed that Mr Dewani’s psychiatric health is fragile. (That) not only is he unfit to participate in these proceedings but furthermore that his health were to suffer if he were required to stay.”

But he added that it was with “some considerable hesitation” that he allowed Dewani to leave.

Dewani had been escorted to the court from Fromeside Clinic, a secure mental health hospital in Bristol where he is on bail. Dewani’s extradition proceedings began in May but were adjourned while a psychiatric report was completed.

Painting a picture of a South African penal system riddled with corruption, gang activity, sexual violence and HIV infection, Ms Montgomery cited damning reports on prisons in the country.

But expert witness Judge Deon Hurter van Zyl, South Africa’s inspecting judge of prisons, played down her concerns, claiming much of the research she was quoting was “total exaggeration”.