Brit held over SA man's death

Fitness instructor Donovan van Lill would have arrived in South Africa to visit his family today - instead, his mother has arrived in London to meet the police, who are searching for her only child's body.

The 29-year-old former Durbanite went missing from his Chippenham flat, north of London, on March 2, leaving behind his wallet, cellphone, car, passport and laptop.

On Friday, 41-year-old Martin David Sugden, of Stanton, near Chippenham, was arrested for Van Lill's murder and appeared in the North West Wiltshire Magistrate's Court, in the southwest of England. He was remanded in custody until April 6.

Police continue to search for Van Lill's body and have not released details of the arrest.

Yesterday, a friend of Van Lill, Bonita Andre, told The Times that she met him in 2008, two years after he had moved to the UK.

She said Van Lill, who had a six-year-old daughter in the UK and an eight-year-old son in South Africa, played rugby for the Corsham Rugby Football Club and was a fitness instructor at the Olympiad Leisure Centre.

Her mother, Margaret Andre, created a Facebook group to help find Van Lill.

It has attracted more than 18000 members, who have helped raise funds for Robyn van Lill, Donovan's mother, to travel to the UK.

"I don't believe that Don is alive. In the UK, when the police charge someone for murder they have enough evidence to say that it is murder. They won't just be throwing that word. We are all going crazy here waiting for news. If Don's body is found soon, we can have closure and he can finally be laid to rest," Andre said.

Van Lill's best friend in the UK, Dominic Giraud, said he had met Sugden a few times.

"He wasn't a close friend or anything, but we knew him. He was a strange, weird character, but Don always saw the good in everyone," he said.

Giraud spoke to Van Lill hours before he went missing.

"He was trying to convince me to go to South Africa with him. He even tried to bribe me with Super 14 rugby tickets, but I told him I had started a new job so couldn't go along. He was really looking forward to going home and to seeing his son," he said.

• Another South African abroad, 16-year-old Hermanus Theodorus Kriel, has been sentenced to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 11 and a half years in prison before being eligible for parole, for the murder of 15-year-old Liberty Rose Templeman, in Kerikeri, New Zealand, two years ago.

Kriel, who emigrated to New Zealand with his parents more than seven years ago, beat Templeman unconscious, strangled her and then dragged her body into a stream in which she drowned.