South African authorities have released an arrest warrant for Zimbabwe’s former first lady Grace Mugabe, who has been accused of assaulting a model with an electrical extension cord in a hotel in August 2017, according to a Wednesday report from BBC News. Gabrielle Engels claims that after Mugabe found her in a hotel room alongside Mugabe’s children, she “walked in with an extension cord and just started beating me with it. She flipped and just kept beating me with the plug. Over and over. I had no idea what was going on. I needed to crawl out of the room before I could run away.” Mugabe said that she acted in self-defense, after she was attacked by an “intoxicated and unhinged” Engels. Although police investigated the incident at the time, Mugabe was granted diplomatic immunity, allowing her to flee the country without consequence. The alleged assault occurred just months before the coup d’état that ousted her husband, Robert Mugabe, from his presidency. Mugabe’s diplomatic immunity was revoked this July. It remains unclear whether South Africa intends to extradite her.
