BBC News Online: World: Africa

Love-triangle murderer hanged

Mariette Bosch was hanged on Saturday two months after her appeal against the death sentence failed.

She spent a year on death row maintaining her innocence after a court found her guilty of murdering her best friend Ria Wolmerans, whose husband she later married.

A panel of Commonwealth judges heard her appeal but decided she did not have a case.

Bosch's last hope was for President Festus Mogae to grant clemency but he made it clear that he was not going to.

State radio announced on Monday that Bosch had been executed at Gaborone's Central Maximum Prison on Saturday morning.

Commissioner of prisons Joseph Orebotse said no family members had been present at the hanging, as is customary in Botswana.

Not convincing

In the long-running trial Bosch was revealed as a manipulative murderess, who planned the death of her best friend so that she could go on to marry the woman's husband.

Bosch is the first white person and the fourth woman to be hanged in Botswana since independence.

The case attracted international attention and was dubbed "Botswana's white mischief" after the famous book about love betrayal in colonial Kenya.

During the appeal a leading British barrister, who has a high reputation for getting death sentences overturned, argued that Bosch was the victim of a miscarriage of justice.