(MENAFN- The Peninsula) British businessman Shrien Dewani denied arranging the murder of his bride during their honeymoon in South Africa at the start of his trial yesterday, four years after she was found shot dead in an abandoned car on the outskirts of Cape Town.
Dewani is accused of conspiring with a taxi-driver to stage a car-jacking as the couple were driven through Gugulethu township in November 2010.
"I plead not guilty to all five counts, my lady," Dewani told the judge after the state prosecutor read out the charges including murder, kidnapping and robbery with aggravating circumstances. If found guilty he faces up to 25 years in jail.
In his plea explanation read to the court, Dewani said he and his bride Anni had been held up and robbed by gunmen as they were driven around Cape Town, South Africa's premier tourist destination. Anni, a former model, was later found several kilometres away in another township, dead from a single gunshot wound.
Dewani also told the court that he was bisexual - apparently a response to British media speculation that he orchestrated Anni's murder to escape from the psychological torment of being trapped in a heterosexual relationship.
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