New inquiry in '86 crash killing Mozambique leader

JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South African police have opened a new investigation into the 1986 airplane crash that killed Mozambique’s Marxist president and more than 20 others, an official said Wednesday, an incident many have blamed on the former apartheid government.

President Samora Machel, who had led Mozambique from its independence in 1975, died when the twin-engine Tupolev 134-A crashed on rain-swept hills just inside of South Africa’s eastern border. His widow, Graca Machel, later married South African anti-apartheid icon Nelson Mandela, who promised while president that anyone found guilty of causing the crash would be “severely punished.”