Synagogue: Movement of corpses to S/Africa delayed

South Africans who died at the Synagogue Church of All Nations, in Lagos, will not be returned to South Africa until all the bodies had been identified, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Nigeria, Louis Mnguni, has revealed.

This came hours after South African forensic experts sent to Nigeria to identify the estimated 84 South Africans killed in the church’s Guest House collapse in Lagos, on September 12, completed their work there and returned home.

According to the Mnguni, the identification of the bodies will take a while longer as the forensic scientists still have to analyse the evidence they’ve been able to gather in Lagos, South Africa’s High Commissioner to Nigeria, Louis Mnguni, said in an interview over the weekend.

Mnguni said SAPS forensic experts, led by Brigadier Helena Ras, a world-renowned expert in body identification, had left Lagos, on Friday, while Chief State Pathologist, Professor Gert Saaiman and his team left Lagos, on Saturday.

The South African experts would analyse the DNA, fingerprint, dental and other evidence they had gathered in Lagos and analyse it in South Africa. This would include comparing DNA samples with those of relatives of the dead in South Africa.

Nigerian pathologists meanwhile, continued their autopsies in Lagos on the victims of the collapse.

“We’ve done everything from our side here,” Mnguni said.

Meanwhile, the authorities of Synagogue Church of All Nations, had released new video footage of the collapse of the guest house, still suggesting that it was brought down somehow by a mysterious aircraft or more than one aircraft filmed in the vicinity of the building a few minutes before it fell.

But an explosives expert, who did not want to be identified, dismissed this theory after examining the videos. “I believe the C130 type aircraft and helicopter – on separate flights actually - are nowhere near the building, and certainly don’t fly over it in my view. They appear to me to be on a flight path azimuth, not linear, to the building location - any interrogation of flight plans for those aircraft at those times would, I am sure, verify this.

Meanwhile, the Lagos State government has continued to call on relatives of the dead to contact the State University Teaching Hospital to identify their family members who died in the incident.

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