The man who confessed to being at the origin of the terrible fire which left nearly 80 dead in August in a Johannesburg building was indicted on Thursday for 76 counts of intentional homicide and 86 attempts.
The 30-year-old South African was presented in the morning before a court in Johannesburg.
With his hands behind his back, he kept his head down throughout his appearance, noted an AFP journalist.
The suspect was arrested on Tuesday after confessing to a commission investigating the case.
After strangling a man having trouble with a drug trafficker, he allegedly set fire to the body to erase the traces of his crime.
The suspect placed in pre-trial detention
Trapped by the flames, 77 people including twelve children ultimately perished trapped in this dilapidated four-story building occupied by squatters and belonging to the municipality, in the dilapidated center of the South African economic capital.
The fire, among the deadliest in the world in the last 20 years, broke out on the night of August 30 to 31.
The building housed around 200 destitute families and a number of
“tsotsi”
, the South African term for gangsters and delinquents.
Many bodies were found behind locked gates.
An opulent business district during the apartheid era, the center of Johannesburg has many abandoned buildings, often without electricity or running water, falling into the hands of slumlords and illegally occupied.
The suspect was placed in pre-trial detention, his request for release having been rejected.
He faces life imprisonment.
According to his lawyer, Me Dumisani Mabunda, the question of whether he will plead guilty or not has not yet been decided.
The next hearing is scheduled for February 1.