She however said that the pair would still be free to sue for defamation if they wished, after the documentary airs. It was released hours after Friday’s judgement was delivered.<\/p>\n
Bester was convicted in 2012 for the rape and murder of his model girlfriend Nomfundo Tyhulu.<\/p>\n
A year earlier, he was found guilty of raping and robbing two other women.<\/p>\n
Bester became known as the “Facebook rapist” for using the social networking site to lure his victims.<\/p>\n
He was serving a life sentence when he allegedly escaped from a maximum security prison in 2022.<\/p>\n
A fire broke out in prison, with the authorities finding a charred body that they thought was Bester’s. However, it turned out to be that of another person.<\/p>\n
Undetected for a year, Bester then allegedly lived under an alias in South Africa’s main city, Johannesburg, helped by his partner.<\/p>\n
The pair were arrested while on the run in the East African state of Tanzania in April 2023, and were deported.<\/p>\n
They are currently in custody, awaiting trial on several charges – including violating a corpse, defeating the ends of justice and fraud.<\/p>\n
They have not yet pleaded to the charges.<\/p>\n
The two had petitioned the court to halt the much-anticipated Netflix documentary, saying it infringed their right to a fair trial.<\/p>\n
Handing down judgment on Friday, Judge Sulet Potterill said the applications lacked urgency, terming it a “self-created urgency”.<\/p>\n
The judge said Bester and Magudumana had ample time to launch their applications and “waited until the last minute” to file it as urgent.<\/p>\n
But the court ruled that it was open to hear their substantive redress, including suing for defamation, as the case law was clear about that.<\/p>\n
“A defamation claim can be instituted and damages sought. I cannot find in any way that the screening of the utterances they find to make the doctor guilty affects her right to a fair trial,” the judge ruled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"She however said that the pair would still be free to sue for defamation if they wished, after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":132457,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[96,2839,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-132456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-movies","tag-entertainment","tag-movies","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=132456"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132456\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/132457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=132456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=132456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=132456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}