Spanish dentist Mario-Cesar Deus Yela will go on trial for the murder of his twins on Monday August 20.
Mr Yela is accused of killing his three-year-old twins, Maximo and Octavia, at the Princess Beach flats in Hout Bay on April 6 last year. He was staying at the complex while exercising his visitation rights. The children had also visited him in Spain in December 2016.
Certain proposals had been made to the State by Mr Yela’s attorney William Booth, but these had not succeeded. The trial date was set at a pre-trial hearing last Friday, March 23.
The Wynberg Magistrate’s Court has previously heard that the twins’ mother, Julia Engelhorn, divorced from Mr Yela in 2015, had found them dead after arriving at his flat on Thursday April 6. Her ex-husband was scheduled to return home to Spain that afternoon.