An inquest into the supposed suicide of renowned cricket writer Peter Roebuck in South Africa in 2011 is set to be reopened, his former employer reported Monday. English-born Roebuck, 55, was covering the Test series between South Africa and Australia when he plunged to his death from the Southern Sun Hotel in Cape Town.
South African police said he leapt out of a sixth floor window after two officers arrived to arrest him over a claim of sexual assault by a Zimbabwean man.
But his family have never accepted the account and his employer, Australia’s Fairfax Media, said investigations into the death would begin again.
“There are many questions regarding the circumstances of his death which have to be probed,” the family’s lawyer George van Niekerk told Fairfax. “The reopened inquest will hopefully allow all the unresolved issues to be fully ventilated.”
David Hood, an English lawyer who previously acted for Roebuck, added in a statement to Britain’s Mail on Sunday that “it is important to all internationally recognised systems of justice that justice is not only done, but is seen to be done”.
“That could never have been with the death of Peter Roebuck, unless and until the circumstances of his death were examined at a legally convened hearing held in public with witnesses called and questioned under oath,” he added.
