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When two young Sudanese women were killed in Khartoum in December 2019, the police thought they might have been the victims of a satanic ritual murder. (Photo: Wikimedia)
The acting ambassador’s husband allegedly hired hitmen to kill the embassy intelligence officer and to murder two local women as “training.”
When two young Sudanese women were killed in Khartoum in December 2019, the police thought they might have been the victims of a satanic ritual murder. One had been dismembered, her body dumped in separate plastic bags outside the city. The corpse of the other was found wrapped in a shroud in a city garbage dump.
Later, the police arrested two locals for the murders and heard an even stranger story. The men claimed that they had lured the women to the apartment of the South African Deputy Ambassador to Sudan and killed them as a “training” exercise. The murders were a test to prepare them for their real mission: assassinate the intelligence officer of the South African embassy.
South Africa’s deputy ambassador to Sudan, Zabantu Ngcobo, and her partner are now under investigation for allegedly hiring the embassy driver and his accomplice to kill the intelligence officer because he was sending home damaging reports on Ngcobo.
The two men were arrested for these murders before they could kill the intelligence officer.
Ngcobo was acting ambassador at the time as the ambassador position was vacant.
The driver, a 25-year-old Eritrean national, identified in a Sudanese newspaper only as “MF”, told Sudanese police when he was arrested for the murder of the two young Sudanese women in Ngcobo’s apartment in the Riyadh diplomatic block in last December: that Ngcobo’s partner had told him to kill the women to show that he was capable of murdering the intelligence officer.
MF’s swift arrest for the murder of the two women, identified in the Sudanese media only as Nisreen and Marwa, and her confession, prevented the intelligence officer’s murder, according to a report in Khartoum’s Al-Sudani newspaper last week.
The Sudanese authorities contacted the South African authorities who exercised the right of Ngcobo and his partner to diplomatic immunity from arrest and prosecution abroad and brought them back home, promising to cooperate with the Sudanese authorities in the investigation. of the accusations against him.
All I can say on this matter is that Dirco knows about it and our police are investigating it and cooperating with the Sudanese police. Unfortunately, we cannot say further until the investigations are complete …
Al-SudaniTheir investigation report on the saga suggests that the Sudanese police believe MF’s explanation that Ngcobo’s partner instigated the murder of Nisreen and Marwa, although at first glance that might seem like a pretty far-fetched excuse for a simple murder.
the Al-Sudani The story goes that there was initial speculation in Khartoum that the women had been killed as part of a satanic ritual because one of the perpetrators was known as a devil worshiper.
Lunga Ngqengelele, spokesperson for the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco), said Daily maverick: “All I can say about this is that Dirco knows about it and our police are investigating it and cooperating with the Sudanese police. Unfortunately, we cannot say further until the investigations are complete … “
However, other official sources in Pretoria have confirmed the basic outline of the story as recounted in Al-Sudani. They said that when Ngcobo and her spouse were in South Africa, the driver MF had organized a party at his residence where the two young Sudanese women were killed. the Al-Sudani The report refers to Ngcobo’s partner as her husband and as a diplomat, though South African officials have said Daily maverick They are not married and he does not work for the embassy.
The saga began on December 19, 2019, when police found the dismembered body of “Marwa” in plastic bags in the Mayo area south of Khartoum, according to Al-Sudani. The crime remained unsolved. Then, 21 days later, on January 10, 2020, a citizen found the body of “Nisreen” wrapped in a shroud in a garbage dump in the Nasser neighborhood, east of Khartoum.
Later, Nisreen was identified through a missing person report submitted by her family.
Five days after Nisreen’s body was found, investigators arrested MF, the driver from the Eritrean embassy, and his accomplice MI, a medical student.
The two suspects confessed to killing Nisreen and Marwa in Ngcobo’s apartment.
The news report says the apparent absence of a plausible motive – “other than the pleasure of killing or worshiping the devil, as one of them claimed in the initial investigation” – initially puzzled investigators.
Later, driver MF had told investigators that Ngcobo’s “husband”, “a young man named ‘Q’”, had confided to him, because they were close friends, that the newly appointed intelligence officer was harassing his wife, the acting ambassador. His security reports on her were causing problems.
Q allegedly asked MF to find professionals to kill the intelligence officer in exchange for $ 50,000. MF agreed immediately.
MF approached his friend, medical student MI, who told him that he had already killed a family outside the country and a woman in Jabal Awliya village and that both crimes remained unsolved. MF took him to meet with Q to discuss the alleged murder.
Al-Sudani reports that Q showed driver MF the intelligence officer’s house on Al-Mashtal street in the Riyadh neighborhood. The next day MF brought his friend MI to show him around the house. The conspirators approached a famous hotel guard to buy a pistol, which he did, from someone else, for 15,000 Sudanese pounds. But it malfunctioned when it was tested and returned to its owner.
The report says that before the murder took place the Christmas holidays came. Ngcobo and her partner planned to travel to London on vacation. But before leaving, Partner Q he stipulated that MF and MI had to carry out at least two crimes before returning from London to reassure him (about his ability to kill).
Al-Sudani said investigators were amazed at MF’s seriousness and dangerousness. confessions, but they realized it was the real motive for the crime. ‘
Ngcobo’s partner left them the key to the couple’s apartment and the car keys.
MF chose “Marwa ” as the first victim, whom he had met five years earlier in a youth center in Khartoum and taught to play the guitar. He lured her to the apartment, killed her, and dumped her body in a plastic bag in the Mayo neighborhood. He met the second victim, “Nisreen”, through another woman who had since been arrested as an accessory.
Al-Sudani said investigators “were in awe of the seriousness and dangerousness of MF confessions, but they realized that it was the true motive of the crime ”. They corroborated MF’s confessions to medical student MI. Police also arrested the hotel guard and the person from whom he bought the gun. Both confessed their complicity and were made prosecution witnesses.
The detectives then contacted the South African embassy and met with the intelligence officer.
They were informed by the Sudanese Foreign Ministry that Ngcobo and his partner enjoyed absolute diplomatic immunity and therefore could not be arrested without the permission of the South African government.
Investigators sent a full report of the case to the South African authorities, who sent a team to remove Ngcobo and his partner from Khartoum for questioning about the case in South Africa. They thanked the Sudanese police for exposing the plot and saving the intelligence officer’s life, and pledged their full cooperation with the Sudanese authorities until the end of the case.
The report notes that under the 1961 Vienna Convention, which regulates diplomatic relations, diplomats accused of crimes in other countries can be prosecuted in those countries with the permission of their own government or they can be prosecuted In their own countries for their crimes.
“The Sudanese authorities are currently detaining the two suspects in the murders of ‘Marwa’ and ‘Nisreen’, pending the response of the South African authorities and the extent of their seriousness in deciding on their diplomats accused of inciting the murder of the two girls as training to assassinate the intelligence officer / security attaché at his embassy in Khartoum ”, the Al-Sudani the report concludes.
Ngcobo and his partner remain in South Africa. DM
