One of Botswana’s most notorious car thieves who escaped from prison while serving an 18 jail sentence has been extradited from South Africa.
Mandandi Chibiya who has in the past been convicted for car theft is already scheduled to appear before the Botswana courts.
Chibiya has been held in South African jails cells for over a year now.
Before fleeing the country, Chibiya was serving 18 year jail term relating to motor vehicle theft.
Detective Assistant Superintendent Joshua Ntau of Motor Vehicle Theft Unit at Serious Crime Squad confirmed that Chibiya who hails from Kasane was extradited from South Africa to Botswana last week.
“Some representatives from the justice department from South Africa will hand over Chibiya to Botswana officials early this week and the hand over will be at the Tlokweng border post and the suspect will be under a very heavy security escort,” he said.
Ntau explained that after the handover, the suspect will then be taken straight to the Gaborone village magistrate court and charged with escaping from lawfully custody.
He said the suspect has been wanted in Botswana for almost two years after escaping from lawful custody and other pending cases that are still before courts which include attempted murder
He said as the police they are now relieved as the suspect will serve his 18 jail sentence for motor vehicle theft. He had been convicted of 44 counts of motor vehicle theft.
It is understood that Chibiya was among the prisoners who managed to break-out from the Gaborone Central Prison in large numbers sometime in 2006.
The prisoners were accused of crimes ranging from murder and rape, car theft to armed robberies. They had managed to escape by tying blankets together and climbing out of the prison window after breaking the iron bar. Soon after the massive escape the government then took a decision to beef up the security at prisons by installing CC TV.
