The Government of Lesotho has dropped murder charges against the country’s former Prime Minister Thomas Thabane and his wife for the 2017 killing of his previous estranged wife Lipolelo.
Prosecuting officers told a court hearing on Tuesday in the capital Maseru that the decision was taken as they could no longer locate an important witness in the case.
The pair had been tangled in bitter divorce proceedings. The former premier and his current wife Maesaiah whom he married two months after Lipolelo was killed, have denied any involvement in the murder.
The killing sparked a political crisis in the mountain kingdom landlocked within South Africa.
Thabane quitted as prime minister in May 2020, giving in to then mounting pressure to step down over the case.
Five co-defendants in the trial included 45-year-old Maesaiah, who was controversially granted bail in June 2020, and the four suspected hitmen allegedly hired by Thabane.