Published : 10 Aug 2026, 03:32 PM
Updated : 08 Sep 2026, 09:31 AM
South African special forces murdered a senior police detective investigating their alleged involvement in an abduction and killing, according to evidence shared with the BBC.
The British broadcaster reported that Lt Col Frans Mathipa, a highly respected officer, had spent four months fighting for access to crucial information in a case he was working on before he was found shot dead in his overturned car in August 2023.
Seven members of South Africa's special forces and one military police officer have since been charged with his murder.
They deny the charges, and no trial date has been set, with the BBC noting concerns proceedings may never go ahead since three of the accused have defied a court order revoking their bail.
They remain employed by the army's special forces, and one has since been promoted.
The BBC said it was given exclusive access to the prosecution case, several hundred pages of secret police and court documents, and had interviewed key sources, including Mathipa's commanding officer and family.
The South African Army did not respond when asked whether it was responsible for the killing.
Police documents show the vehicle that trailed Mathipa just before he was shot was registered to a front company for special forces, with tracking data placing it at the scene.
One of the men in the car, Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, was also identified at the scene of an alleged abduction, the very case Mathipa was investigating.
Following Mathipa's death, special forces issued a warning to the elite police unit the Hawks, according to police documents: "You can appoint 10 investigating officers; we will kill all of them."
The case centred on Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian man alleged to be a so-called Islamic State militant, who had been granted temporary asylum in South Africa in 2008 but was arrested abroad in 2017.
Col Tollie Vreugdenburg, former head of counter-terrorism at the Hawks, told the BBC Abadigga was smuggled back into the country by the military and Department of Home Affairs to serve as an intelligence asset, but had “gone rogue”, later extorting Johannesburg's Ethiopian community to fund IS, according to the US government.
The army and Department of Home Affairs did not respond to BBC queries on Abadigga's return to the country.
Mathipa was investigating allegations that special forces abducted and killed Abadigga in December 2022.
The US had sanctioned Abadigga earlier that year as an IS recruiter and fundraiser linked to senior IS figure Bilal al-Sudani.
Court documents show Abadigga's phone connected to a mast near a military base after his abduction and was used to call a number in Somalia.
The Pentagon did not respond when asked whether the phone helped locate al-Sudani, killed by US special forces in Somalia weeks later.
President Cyril Ramaphosa declined to comment on whether Abadigga's abduction was carried out at the US's behest.
Mathipa built on evidence gathered by Abadigga's brother, Ameen, who had filed a missing person's case and obtained CCTV footage from Johannesburg's Mall of Africa showing Abadigga and bodyguard Kadir Abotese's last known movements, trailed by a man in a blue top later identified as Maj Wambi.
The footage also captured licence plates tracing the suspects' vehicles to Peters Communications Trust (PCT), a special forces front company whose directors included Maj Gen Herbert Mashego, then commanding officer of 5 Special Forces Regiment.
Police documents say military officials, including then special forces chief Brig Gen Yalo, instructed the investigating officer to deny any link between PCT and the military.
With the probe stalled, Ameen took the case to the Johannesburg High Court.
Special forces denied knowledge of Abadigga's whereabouts but admitted their soldiers, including Wambi, were at the mall for a “training exercise”, and confirmed the vehicles belonged to them.
When Mathipa took over the case a month later, he subpoenaed special forces for full details of the exercise.
Access to the documents was finally promised three months later, by which point Mathipa had a premonition he would be killed, his commanding officer Brig Paulina Sekgobela told the BBC.
“He said ‘brigadier, these people, they are going to kill me. I'm going to die’.”
New detectives assigned after Mathipa's death received a similar warning via police intelligence, that all of them would be killed too.
Twelve military personnel have been arrested, including Wambi and the current special forces chief, Brig Gen Solomon Lechoenyo, both promoted since the investigation began.
They face charges including abduction, murder, fraud and obstruction, and deny all of them. Six later had bail revoked; three, including Wambi, face charges over both killings.
The military has refused to hand them over, with lawyers citing mental health treatment in July for their absence.
No trial date has been set three years on, and Abadigga's body has never been found.
"[Mathipa] was barking up the right tree. He was taking on the right lion," Vreugdenburg said.
His daughter Basetsana said, "We need justice. I'm never going to see my dad anymore... Why my dad? Because he was doing his job."
