Last summer I did an Executed Today entry from Equatorial Guinea. I’ve also done one from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Today there’s one by me from Botswana: Modise Mokwadi Fly. He was an activist, reggae artist, politician and possessed an impressive head of dreadlocks. He was also a child killer. He admitted to having killed his two-year-old son with an ax. Whether he did it deliberately or not was open to question; he maintained to his dying breath that it was an accident.
This would be an ordinary enough murder case were it not for the fact that, the month before his death, Fly escaped from death row (the first in Botswana to do so) and was free for a whopping fifteen minutes before the authorities dragged him back inside and, it was said, beat him black and blue and threw him in isolation so no one could see his injuries. Word of the alleged mistreatment (never proven) was leaked to the press on March 23. On March 24, the Botswana prison authorities executed Fly in rather a hurry and without notifying his family. The timing is a bit odd, yes? But there the matter rests.
