Man held in South Africa over murder of UK bride

Police in South Africa have arrested a man in connection with the murder of Anni Dewani, who was killed while on honeymoon with her British husband after their car was hijacked.

A police spokesman said a 26-year-old from Khayelitsha, a large township on the outskirts of Cape Town, was arrested early yesterday.

Albert Fritz, an MP and the Western Cape community safety minister, called the arrest an "absolutely positive result". "Investigations are at a very advanced stage," he said. "We have found forensic evidence in the car and we know who the person is."

Swedish-born Mrs Dewani was found on Sunday morning after the taxi that she and her husband had been travelling in was targeted by gunmen in the township of Gugulethu on Saturday night. The couple had married in India two weeks earlier.

Shrien Dewani recalled yesterday how he had pleaded with the carjackers for them not to be separated. "The first we knew that the cab was being attacked was when we heard the banging," he said. "I don't want to go into detail about what happened during the attack, because I will probably start crying. But they were so cold. They put a gun in my ear and pulled back the trigger.

"The men kept on saying: 'We are not going to hurt you. We just want the car.' That was a lie. Most of the conversation in the car was us pleading for us to be dumped together. I held on to Anni as I said to them: 'Look, if you're not going to hurt her, why don't you let us go?'"

He said the men forced him out of the window of the taxi after driving around for 20 minutes, saying that they would not harm his wife, before leaving with her still inside.

Mr Dewani, from Bristol, said the couple had left the tourist areas of the region to see the "real Africa".