Bogus sign language interpreter linked to 'mob' killings The bogus sign language interpreter at last week's Nelson Mandela memorial service was among a group of people who accosted two men found with a stolen television and burnt them to death, one of the interpreter's cousins and three of his friends said on Monday. But Thamsanqa Jantjie never went to trial for the 2003 killings when other suspects did in 2006 because authorities determined he was not mentally fit to stand trial, said the four. They insisted on speaking anonymously because of the sensitivity of the fake signing fiasco, which has deeply embarrassed South Africa's government and prompted a high-level investigation into how it happened. Their account of the killings matched a description of the crime and the outcome for Mr Jantjie that he himself described in an interview published on Sunday by the Sunday Times of Johannesburg. "It was a community thing, what you call mob justice, and I was also there," Mr Jantjie told the newspaper. Mr Jantjie was not at his house on Monday, and the cousin told AP he had been picked up by someone in a car on Sunday and had not returned. Contacted by AFP on Monday, Mr Jantjie dismissed the newspaper report as "nonsense." Instead of standing trial after the incident, Mr Jantjie was institutionalised for more than a year, the four said, before returning to live on the outskirts of Soweto. At some point after that, they said, he started getting jobs as a sign language interpreter at events for the governing African National Congress. In an interview last Thursday, Mr Jantjie said he had been violent in the past "a lot" but declined to provide more details and blamed his violence on his schizophrenia, for which he said he was institutionalised for 19 months. The cousin and the three friends said the killing of the suspected thieves occurred within a few hundred metres of Mr Jantjie's home. An investigation is under way by South African officials to determine who hired Mr Jantjie as the onstage interpreter at the Mandela memorial service and if and how he received security clearance. The officials have not said how long their investigation will take.