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South Africa issued an arrest warrant for the controversial millionaire pastor Shepard Bushiri, who skipped bail and returned to his home in Malawi.
On Saturday, he told his social media followers that he had left South Africa because he had received death threats.
The preacher, who was out on bail and awaiting trial for money laundering and fraud, had previously said he wanted to clear his name.
It is not clear how or when Mr. Bushiri left South Africa.
In an interview with the BBC, Bushiri refused to reveal how he escaped.
But the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko in Malawi’s capital Lilongwe reports that one possibility being considered is that he and his wife Mary were smuggled out by a sophisticated syndicate that specializes in bringing stolen cars from South Africa to Malawi.
There have also been suggestions in the South African press that he was smuggled on the presidential plane from Malawi, something that authorities in both countries have denied.
How has Shepherd Bushiri sparked a diplomatic row?
Malawian President Lazarus Chakwera was in South Africa on a state visit last week, and there has been speculation in South Africa that a member of his entourage had helped Bushiri escape.
This has been denied by officials in both Malawi and South Africa, but a diplomatic dispute is brewing.
Malawi’s foreign minister told the BBC that he thought South African authorities suspected that Malawians were trying to smuggle the controversial preacher out.
“When we arrived in Malawi and left South Africa, we were exposed to strict controls. It is just now that we began to realize that perhaps there was a suspicion that we were trying to smuggle Bushiri out of South Africa,” said the Foreign Minister. Foreign of Malawi. Eisenhower Mkaka told the BBC’s Nomsa Maseko on Saturday.
On Monday morning he later complained, very publicly, on Twitter about the seven-hour delay in the president’s trip, which included “vague security reasons” for comprehensive checks on the presidential plane.
Source: BBC
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