Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Lebanese owner of a pharmacy in the centre of Maputo was kidnapped from his establishment on Saturday morning, a police source has told Lusa.
“We have confirmed the kidnapping [of the Lebanese citizen], which took place this morning,” said José Macuácua, deferring further information about the crime to a later date.
Video surveillance footage shows the moment two of the alleged kidnappers enter the pharmacy on Avenida Vladimir Lenin at around 9:40 a.m., joining a third individual who was already inside the establishment.
A few second later, one of the men holds the victim, forcing him to drop his cell phone. Another of the attackers locks the pharmacy and guards the door of the establishment while another menaces employees and customers with a gun.
The victim is then dragged to the door and forced to leave the establishment with the attackers, the footage reveals.
Mais um empresário foi raptado, na cidade de Maputo. O crime ocorreu em plena luz do dia, dentro do estabelecimento da vítima, na avenida Vladimir Lenine, próximo ao mercado Janete.
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On June 12, Mozambican police authorities announced that the number of kidnappings in the city of Maputo fell by half in the first five months of the year, with four cases, compared to eight in the same period in 2024.
“This year there has been a reduction compared to last year. Kidnapping cases in the city of Maputo tend to decrease and, as we can see, even this latest case was immediately solved,” said the spokesperson for the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic), João Adriano.
Before this case involving the Lebanese citizen, the last case of kidnapping in the Mozambican capital occurred on May 27, when an 8-year-old child, the daughter of a businessman, was kidnapped and released the same day in the Sommerschield neighbourhood, an exclusive area of Maputo.
Since 2011, a wave of kidnappings has hit Mozambique, with the victims being mainly businesspeople and their families, mainly people of Asian descent, a group that dominates commerce in the urban centres of the country’s provincial capitals.
Around 150 businesspeople have been kidnapped in Mozambique in the last 12 years, and perhaps a hundred have left the country out of fear, according to figures released in July last year by the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA), which argues that it is time for the government to say “enough is enough.”
Most kidnappings committed in Mozambique are planned outside the country, especially in South Africa, former Attorney General Beatriz Buchili told parliament in April 2024.
Mozambican police have recorded a total of 185 kidnappings up to March 2024, and at least 288 people have been arrested on suspicion of involvement in this type of crime since 2011, according to the latest figures released by the Ministry of the Interior.
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