Africa-Press – Mozambique. The Mozambican Minister of the Interior, Paulo Chachine, said on Wednesday that in-depth work is ongoing to identify the “true masterminds” behind kidnappings in the country, though dismantling the “web of those responsible” for these crimes remains a challenging task.
“The work being carried out is in-depth and it is not easy,” Minister Chachine told journalists on the sidelines of the Legal Day celebrations in Maputo.
In 2025 alone, six cases of businessmen being kidnapped in Maputo have been publicly recorded, the most recent involving a 69-year-old Portuguese citizen, on 7 October.
Minister Chachine further explained that, as this is organised crime, kidnapping involves “a web of those responsible.”
“There is a network of perpetrators involved in this act, ranging from the lowest-level participants to the owner—the mastermind,” he said, emphasising that the police’s goal is to identify the “true masterminds.”
“Each person involved in this crime has their own responsibility, and it is because of this that, sometimes, it is thought that they [the masterminds] have not yet been reached, but the masterminds will be reached,” added the Minister of the Interior.
The National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) announced on 3 November that it had detained two men suspected of involvement in the kidnapping of a Portuguese businessman, which occurred on 7 October in Maputo. The service added that it expects to locate the victim soon, in what was the first publicly known case of its kind since June.
The spokesperson for SERNIC in Maputo, João Adriano, assured at the time that the investigation was progressing “in great strides” towards resolving the case and reiterated that the “greatest need” now is to reunite the victim with his family.
The recent kidnapping involving the Portuguese citizen is the first publicly known case since 21 June, the day when a Lebanese citizen, owner of a chemist’s, was kidnapped at his establishment in central Maputo.
From 2011 until March 2024, Mozambican police recorded a total of 185 kidnappings and detained at least 288 people suspected of involvement in these crimes, according to the latest data released by the Ministry of the Interior.
Since kidnappings were first recorded in Mozambique in 2010, around 300 people involved in such cases have been detained, the national spokesperson of SERNIC told Lusa on 23 October.
“These are cumulative numbers since kidnappings began in 2010 until today,” national spokesperson of SERNIC Hilário Lole told Lusa at the time, clarifying that this statistic represents only an “approximate” number.
Approximately 150 businesspeople have been kidnapped in Mozambique over the past 12 years, and around 100 have fled the country due to fear, according to figures released in 2024 by the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique (CTA), which asserts that it is time for the Government to say ‘Enough.’”
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