British Businessman Accused of Arranging His Wife's Murder Is Acquitted

London: In a case that has made international headlines, a South African judge on Monday acquitted a British businessman accused of arranging for his wife to be murdered on their honeymoon.

Shrien Dewani, 34, went on trial in October for the 2010 killing of his 28-year-old wife, Anni Dewani. For three years, he had resisted extradition from Britain and then argued unsuccessfully in South Africa that he was mentally unfit. He had been charged with setting up her murder in circumstances meant to resemble a carjacking - a common occurrence in South Africa - in a hardscrabble township outside Cape Town.

In a hearing in Cape Town on Monday, streamed live on South African news websites, Judge Jeanette Traverso said there was "no evidence on which a reasonable court can convict the accused" since the prosecution's case "cannot pass legal muster."

The judge said that the prosecution's evidence fell "far below" the legal threshold for credible testimony and that "the accused is found not guilty." Reporters who have followed the case said Dewani might fly back to Britain later Monday.

Prosecutors said that Dewani paid 15,000 rand, or about $1,300, for the killing. The businessman denied charges of murder and kidnapping. His lawyers had said that the prosecution's case was so full of contradictions that Dewani should have been acquitted without having to mount a defense, as is permitted under South African law.

In earlier proceedings, three South African men were given long prison terms for the killing, but one of them has since died of a brain tumor. Their testimony, offered as part of plea bargains for shorter sentences, provided the basis of the prosecution's case against Dewani.

Prosecutors argued that the businessman had ordered the murder because he was a gay man forced into marriage by pressure from his family. Dewani said that he was bisexual and that he and his wife had had a loving relationship. He testified that his wife was shot to death when they were kidnapped and he was forced out of the car.

Both Dewani and his wife are of Indian descent, although he is British and she was Swedish. Wedding photographs widely circulated on the Internet show the couple in sumptuous Indian dress.

As Dewani left the dock, members of his wife's family expressed outrage at the judge's ruling. In chaotic scenes, a crowd gathered outside the Western Cape High Court to protest it.

Speaking on live television, Nathi Mncube, a spokesman for the National Prosecuting Authority, appealed for calm, saying, "We must respect the decision of the court, even if we do not agree with it."

The Dewani trial opened just as another sensational murder trial - that of Oscar Pistorius, the onetime track star - headed toward its conclusion. Pistorius was acquitted of murdering his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, but was found guilty of culpable homicide, equivalent to manslaughter.

The athlete was sentenced in October to five years in prison. In an appeal set to be heard Tuesday, prosecutors have called the term "shockingly light" because Pistorius might be released on house arrest after 10 months in a prison hospital wing.

Like the Pistorius case, Dewani's trial focused attention on South Africa's post-apartheid justice system, the forensic abilities of the police and prosecutors, and gun crime in a society still haunted by the violence of its past.

Those concerns resurfaced in October when the captain of South Africa's national soccer team, Senzo Meyiwa, was shot to death in a robbery attempt at a house near Johannesburg.

According to statistics based on official police figures, South Africa's murder rate ranks among the world's highest, with 17,068 homicides recorded in a 12-month span between 2013 and this year.

High-profile trials like those of Pistorius and Dewani generate much attention, feeding a perception among outsiders, and some South Africans, that racial minorities are the prime victims of violent crime.

But, Antony Altbeker, a South African author, wrote an Op-Ed article in The New York Times in November, "All the data available suggest that, while per capita murder rates among white South Africans are high by international standards, they are considerably lower than the rates of lethal violence experienced by their black compatriots."

The acquittal on Monday seemed certain to draw some of the same criticism as the Pistorius trial about whether the justice system is skewed in favor of rich defendants, while the less wealthy face long periods of incarceration before their trials and substantial prison terms on conviction.