Sister of Brit ‘ISIS victim’ Rachel Saunders kidnapped and murdered in Cape Town reveals horror of being told jihadi thugs had butchered her
The mutilated body of Rachel Saunders was identified on Friday - she and her botanist husband, Rodney Saunders, were murdered and their bodies were dumped in a river
THE sister of a British "ISIS victim" murdered in South Africa has said she never stopped hoping her sibling would be found alive - even when police started searching for her body.
Botanists Rachel Saunders, 63, and her husband Rodney Saunders, 74, were murdered by an ISIS linked gang while searching for seeds in a remote forest.
The pair were last seen alive on February 10 of this year.
Rachel’s body was identified on June 15 by police at a local morgue, while Rodney's body was removed from a crocodile infested river and identified on April 28.
It was later revealed in court that both bodies were thrown into the river after being horrifically murdered.
Now, just days after her body was identified, Saunders’ sister has told of her nightmare and revealed she never stopped hoping Rachel would be found alive.
Judith Buchanan, 73, said: “The police found so much blood in their car, they said she couldn’t possibly be alive, but in my head there was still hope.
“I suppose that’s just human nature.
"You hope for some miracle, well, in this case there wasn’t a miracle.
"There was hope, but now there is none.
“I said, come on, someone is playing a horrible practical joke, people like them don’t just get kidnapped.
"Then gradually you realise that it’s actually true.”
The day before their kidnapping the Cape Town based pair, who own the indigenous seed supplier Silverhill Seeds, had just wrapped shooting in the Drakensburg Mountains with Award-winning BBC Gardener’s World host Nick Bailey.
Police have said the couple were hunting for rare seeds in Ngoye Forest Reserve near Mtunzini, 80 miles north of Durban, when they were attacked.
Judith said: “I started to lose hope when the ransom demand didn’t come and we never heard anything day after day… For a while I had these awful visions of Rod and Rachel wandering around the forest hurt and unable to find their way out.”
ISIS-linked suspects Sayfydeen Aslam Del Vecchio, 38, and his wife Fatima Patel, 27, were arrested just five days after the couple went missing.
The pair’s home and cellphones yielded incriminating evidence about the couple’s demise but not the whereabouts of their bodies.
Thembamandla Xulu, 19, and Malawian Ahmad Jackson Mussa were both arrested soon after, and more details of the murders came to light.
Jackson Mussa said he and Patel drove around with Del Vecchio after Vecchio had murdered the couple.
He claimed they drove around in the Saunders’ white Toyota Landcruiser - found abandoned on February 18 in Waterloo with a large amount of blood in the cargo area.
They then allegedly headed to Tugela River Bridge where he claims they unloaded two sleeping bags containing the bodies.
Police said: “[Mussa] saw two heads of white people in the sleeping bags, they threw the bodies in the sleeping bags into the river.”
Afterwards Del Vecchio allegedly warned Mussa not breathe a word about the incident to anyone.