WESTERN CAPE. – Action Society is demanding an urgent review at senior level of the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) decision to withdraw charges against Jacques Pretorius. The decision was made on Monday, five October 2024, the day his trial was set to begin in the Cape Town High Court over the murder of his wife, Sheri-Ann Jacobs.
Jacobs' family has been waiting nearly five years for answers and is now facing the possibility that the prosecution could fail before evidence is tested during a trial. Juanita du Preez, spokesperson for Action Society, says Jacobs' father has informed the organisation that the NPA told him charges are being withdrawn because the state's pathologist is no longer willing to testify against the defence team's expert witness.
Jacobs died on twenty November 2021, shortly after her marriage to Pretorius. Her death was initially investigated as a suspected suicide, while her family maintained that the scene may have been staged.
Pretorius was taken into custody in March 2025 after new forensic evidence allegedly suggested that Jacobs was strangled and the scene was fabricated. He has been charged with, among other things, murder with premeditation and defeating the ends of justice. Action Society is now demanding that a senior prosecutor urgently review the complete file, the original and revised forensic opinions and the remaining evidence. The organisation also wants to know what changed in the forensic assessment and whether an independent expert review was conducted.
This article is an automatic English translation of a Nuusflits article originally published in Afrikaans. Read the Afrikaans original.
