For four months, senior police detective Lt Col Frans Mathipa fought to access a key piece of evidence in a sensitive case.
When he was finally told the information was coming, he told colleagues he feared it would get him killed.
Two days later, he was shot dead while driving. His car was found overturned.
Seven members of South Africa’s special forces and one military police officer have now been charged with his murder in August 2023.
All deny the charges, and with three of them refusing to comply with a court order revoking their bail, there are fears the case may never reach trial.
The BBC World Service was given exclusive access to the prosecution’s case against the accused, based on hundreds of pages of secret police and court documents, along with interviews with key figures in the investigation.
Together, they build the most detailed public account yet of the events leading to Mathipa’s death, and present a compelling case that special forces were responsible.
South Africa’s army did not respond to questions from the BBC about its role in Mathipa’s death.
A vehicle, a warning, and a trail of evidence
According to police documents, the car that trailed Mathipa shortly before he was shot was registered to a front company used by special forces, and tracking data placed that vehicle at the scene of the shooting.
One occupant, Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, had also allegedly been seen at the scene of a separate abduction Mathipa was investigating.
After Mathipa’s death, police documents say special forces sent a chilling message to his unit, The Hawks, warning that any new investigators assigned to the case would be killed.
The case that got him killed
Mathipa had been investigating the alleged abduction and killing of Abdella Abadigga, an Ethiopian man accused of being an Islamic State militant.
Abadigga had been granted temporary asylum in South Africa in 2008 before being arrested abroad in 2017.
According to Col Tollie Vreugdenburg, former head of counter-terrorism at The Hawks, Abadigga was later smuggled back into South Africa by the military and Department of Home Affairs to serve as an intelligence asset, but went rogue.
Community sources told the BBC he went on to extort Johannesburg’s Ethiopian community, funds the US government says helped finance IS.
Mathipa was investigating claims that special forces abducted and killed Abadigga in December 2022.
Months earlier, the US had sanctioned Abadigga, naming him an IS recruiter, fundraiser, and close associate of Bilal al-Sudani, a senior IS figure in Somalia who US special forces killed in Somalia weeks after Abadigga’s alleged abduction.
Court documents show Abadigga’s phone connected to a mast near a military base after his disappearance, and was reportedly used to call a number in Somalia.
The Pentagon did not respond to questions about whether that phone helped locate al-Sudani.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa declined to comment on whether Abadigga’s abduction was carried out at the request of the US.
The army and Department of Home Affairs did not respond to BBC questions about Abadigga’s return to South Africa.
CCTV, front companies, and a denial that fell apart
Before Mathipa was assigned the case, Abadigga’s brother, Ameen, had opened a missing-person’s case and obtained CCTV footage from the Mall of Africa showing Abadigga and his bodyguard’s final known movements.
The footage shows a man in a blue top following them, and license plates linking the suspected kidnappers’ vehicles to a company called Peters Communications Trust (PCT), a known front for special forces.
At the time, PCT’s directors included Maj Gen Herbert Mashego, then commanding officer of the 5 Special Forces Regiment.
Police documents allege senior military officials, including then special forces chief Brig Gen Yalo, instructed the investigating officer to deny any link between PCT and the military.
With the case stalled, Ameen took it to the Johannesburg High Court. In response, special forces denied knowledge of Abadigga’s whereabouts, but admitted their soldiers were at the mall that day for what they described as a training exercise.
They identified the man in the blue top as Maj Sunnybooi Wambi, naming him exercise commander, and confirmed the vehicles seen on CCTV belonged to them.
Domestic military operations require approval from both the government and the presidency.
Former Defence Minister Thandi Modise did not respond, and President Ramaphosa declined to comment, when asked whether they had authorised a training exercise at the mall.
Mathipa’s premonition
A month after the court case, Mathipa was assigned to the investigation and issued a subpoena demanding full details of the alleged training exercise.
When access to the requested documents was finally promised, three months later, Mathipa told his commanding officer, Brig Paulina Sekgobela, that he believed it would cost him his life.
“When he left my office he said: ‘Brigadier, you know, these people, they are going to kill me,'” Sekgobela told the BBC.
On the day he was killed, Mathipa received a call from a man identifying himself as Tebogo, who claimed to have information for him, according to Mathipa’s daughter Basetsana.
The two arranged to meet at a Pretoria petrol station.
When Tebogo didn’t show, Mathipa drove off and was killed on the highway by rounds from high-velocity weapons, which South African police say special forces would have had access to.
Police say toll gantry footage shows Maj Sunnybooi Wambi in the black BMW that tailed Mathipa moments before his death, a vehicle also registered to PCT, the same company linked to Abadigga’s abduction.
Twelve arrests, no trial date
Following Mathipa’s death, new investigators were assigned to the case, prompting another alleged threat from special forces, warning that any number of new officers would be killed, according to information that reached the police’s Criminal Intelligence division.
In total, 12 members of the South African military have been arrested, including Lt Col Sunnybooi Wambi and Brig Gen Solomon Lechoenyo, the current head of special forces, both promoted since the investigation into their alleged roles began.
They face charges including the abduction and murder of Abadigga and his bodyguard, Mathipa’s murder, fraud and obstruction. All deny the charges.
Six of the twelve later had their bail revoked and were ordered into custody. Three of them, including Wambi, face charges tied to both Mathipa’s murder and the abduction and killing of Abadigga’s bodyguard, but the military has refused to hand them over.
Their lawyers cited mental health treatment for their absence in July.
Three years after Mathipa’s killing, no trial date has been set, and Abadigga’s body has never been found.
“He was barking up the right tree. He was taking on the right lion,” Vreugdenburg said of Mathipa.
His daughter, Basetsana, put it more simply: she wants justice for a father she says was killed for doing his job.