Three more people were killed in what has been described as "a black week for aviation" when their aircraft crashed Plettenberg Bay on Sunday after allegedly hitting a powerline and bursting into flames. The latest accident brings the number of people killed in aircraft accidents this week to 18.

OUTH Africa's most wanted man has turned out to be little more than an alleged microwave oven thief. When Mostert appeared in the Wynberg magistrate's court earlier on Friday, a number of theft charges were laid against him, including the theft of a microwave oven and other goods from various hotels and guest houses in the Western Cape.

National Police Commissioner George Fivaz said at a press conference held in Pretoria at midday that Mostert was no longer a suspect in two pipe-bombing incidents in Cape Town in November. "We are convinced that Mostert is not involved in (the) bombings," Fivaz said at a news conference. "We are still investigating ...the bombings in the Western Cape."

The arrest of the 26-year-old Mostert on Wednesday after the release of a national alert was initially hailed as a breakthough that soon descended into farce, with police back-tracking on claims he was connected to the bombings.

Fivaz told reporters that Mostert was a "chronic liar" who had fabricated claims that he was involved in the bombings. Fivaz also dismissed allegations by Mostert implicating denior police officials in the bombings as "a pack of lies."

But he said that Mostert had been with two anti-corruption police officers at the time of his arrest and that he had worked for the anti-corruption unit as an informant.

Fivaz said the involvement of the two officers was being investigated and they could face charges of "defeating the ends of justice." The fiasco has done nothing to help the image of a police force struggling to contain one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world amid widespread perception that it is corrupt and inefficient.

The blasts have raised the spectre of a renewed wave of urban terror in Cape Town, the country's top tourist destination.

The November 28 bombing of a popular pizza restaurant that injured 48 people came just three weeks after a gay bar was bombed, hurting nine people.

© Reuters

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