The husband of a newlywed murdered on her honeymoon in South Africa has revealed that he pleaded with armed carjackers not to separate him from his wife.
Shrien Dewani and his wife Anni had been married for just two weeks when their taxi was targeted in a township on the outskirts of Cape Town late on Saturday night.
The gunmen drove off with the couple inside the people carrier and forced Mr Dewani, 31, out of the window of the vehicle after driving around dark streets for 20 minutes.
With a gun held to his head, he was told that his partner would not be harmed. The body of his 28-year-old Swedish wife was found the next morning.
“The first we knew that the cab was being attacked was when we heard the banging,” Mr Dewani told the Daily Mail. “I don’t want to go into detail about what happened during the attack, because I will probably start crying. But they were so cold. They put a gun in my ear and pulled back the trigger – it really was the stuff of movies.
“The men kept on saying ‘We are not going to hurt you. We just want the car’.That was a lie.
“Most of the conversation in the car was us pleading for us to be dumped together. I held on to Anni as I said to them ‘Look, if you’re not going to hurt her, why don’t you let us go?'”
Police in South Africa are still hunting for the killers. A Western Cape Police spokesman said: “The investigation is still ongoing and the search for the suspects continues. No-one has been arrested and detectives are following up on all possible leads.”
Meanwhile, more than 3,100 people have joined a Facebook tribute page set up in the memory of the late Mrs Dewani.
One user, Ami Denborg, wrote: “My dearest little sister. I will miss you so much. It’s so hard to imagine a life without you being a part of it.”
