Africa-Press – Mozambique. Everything is ready for the start, on Monday, of the court sessions in the ‘undeclared debts’ case. The sessions will take place at the Maximum Security Penitentiary Establishment (BO), on the outskirts of Matola [in Machava], in Maputo province, Ntícias reports.
The promise was given yesterday by Pedro Nhatitima, judge-adviser and spokesperson for the Supreme Court, at the end of the inspection and assessment of the giant tent set up to host the court sessions in the biggest corruption scandal that the country has recorded in post-independence times.
The guided tour was attended by members of the staff of the Supreme Court, the Attorney General’s Office, the Mozambican Bar Association, support staff of the Judicial Court of Maputo City, journalists and security personnel, among others.
Nhatitima explained that erecting a tent able to accommodate 80 people was aimed at ensuring greater public participation, the court room of the Judicial Court of Maputo City being too small to accommodate all the court support staff, defendants, lawyers, deponents and witnesses as well as the journalists and others interested in following the sessions.
“Conditions are in place for the court to begin its work with all due serenity and tranquillity. Everything has been done, within the context of the new coronavirus pandemic, to enable the trial to run smoothly,” Nhatitima said.
The source denied information circulated in recent days, according to which the judge in the case, Efigénio Baptista, had submitted a letter resigning the presidency of the trial.
“On the contrary, the judge is ‘rock solid’, and will assume his work with due responsibility,” Nhatitima reported.
The holding of this trial, the judge-adviser and spokesperson for the Supreme Court said, is not only an occasion to do justice, on the basis of the matter produced in the court files, but also for society to know what actually happened.
Meanwhile, 250 media professionals, including journalists, photographers and radio and television technicians, had by Thursday been accredited to cover the trial sessions by the Information Office (GABINFO). According to the body’s director, Emília Moiane, those accredited are all from Mozambican media bodies.
“We call on journalists to report the events with impartiality, so that society can be aware of everything that happened,” Moiane urged.
She added that a press room had been set up to accommodate the journalists covering the trial, as well as to broadcast live – and on other platforms – the main events of the process.
