{"id":195209,"date":"2025-04-02T17:16:07","date_gmt":"2025-04-02T15:16:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/south-africa-state-failed-to-prove-case-as-nigerian-pastor-south-african-co-accused-walk-free-on-30-rape-charges\/"},"modified":"2025-04-02T17:16:07","modified_gmt":"2025-04-02T15:16:07","slug":"south-africa-state-failed-to-prove-case-as-nigerian-pastor-south-african-co-accused-walk-free-on-30-rape-charges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/west-africa\/nigeria\/south-africa-state-failed-to-prove-case-as-nigerian-pastor-south-african-co-accused-walk-free-on-30-rape-charges\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa: &#8216;State Failed to Prove Case&#8217; as Nigerian Pastor, South African Co-Accused Walk Free on 30 Rape Charges"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"48\">Nigerian pastor Timothy Omotoso and his co-accused Lusanda Sulani and Zukiswa Sitho have been found not guilty on all charges. The verdict comes eight years after the accused were arrested &#8211;\u00a0Omotoso was in custody for the duration of the trial, while Sulani and Sitho were out on bail.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"23\">They had faced more than <a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202501230409.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">30 charges of rape, human trafficking, and racketeering<\/a> in the Gqeberha High Court in the Eastern Cape province.<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body-text\" data-para-word-count=\"21\">In her ruling this morning, Judge Irma Schoeman said the State had failed to&#8230;<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/allafrica.com\/stories\/202504020362.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Read more on AllAfrica.com<\/a><br \/>\n<br \/>South Africa Today Africa \u2013 West Africa <a title=\"Nigeria\" href=\"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/category\/west-africa\/nigeria\/\">Nigeria<\/a> News<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nigerian pastor Timothy Omotoso and his co-accused Lusanda Sulani and Zukiswa Sitho have been found not guilty on all charges. The verdict comes eight years after the accused were arrested &#8211;\u00a0Omotoso was in custody for the duration of the trial, while Sulani and Sitho were out on bail. They had faced more than 30 charges [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":195210,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00401377:381a0c9e42c6f38f63376601b55a37e6:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[249],"tags":[258,256,4380,6683,7578,19288,9281,6544,257,393,482,7582,8810,305,5069,254,6017,16431],"class_list":["post-195209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nigeria","tag-africa","tag-africa-news","tag-african","tag-case","tag-charges","tag-coaccused","tag-failed","tag-free","tag-news","tag-nigeria-news","tag-nigerian","tag-pastor","tag-prove","tag-rape","tag-south","tag-south-africa-today","tag-state","tag-walk"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/cdn.allafrica.com\/download\/pic\/main\/main\/csiid\/00401377:381a0c9e42c6f38f63376601b55a37e6:arc614x376:w1200.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=195209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/195209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/195210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=195209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=195209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/southafricatoday.net\/africa-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=195209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}