Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique’s National Prison Service (SERNAP) on Wednesday denied claims made by Angela Leao, one of the 19 accused in the case of the “hidden debts” that she has been ill-treated and deprived of adequate medical care since her arrest in March 2019.
Leao and her lawyer, Damiao Cumbane, told the Maputo City Court on Monday that the prison management was preventing her from contacting her doctors,
“I’m ill, and the prison doesn’t believe me”, Leao claimed “My illness is getting worse. I will die if things continue like this. When this trial ends, I will no longer exist”.
While a witness was speaking, Leao suddenly collapsed, and had to be helped out of the court. This forced the judge, Efigenio Baptista, to abort the Monday hearing.
At a press conference held in the Maputo Civil Prison, where Leao is jailed, SERNAP spokesperson Clemente Intsamuele said that “ever since the day she entered this prison, Angela Leao has been promptly cared for, and taken to hospital in due time. So the statements that she and her lawyer made in court are not true”.
The prison, Intsamuele added, has issued 15 notes allowing her to leave the jail for medical consultations in public and private hospitals. She has also been allowed visits from her husband, Gregorio Leao, the former head of the Security and Intelligence Service (SISE), who is also a defendant in the “hidden debts” case.
Intsamuele also categorically denied a claim made by Cumbane that an inmate (whom he did not name) had died in his cell for lack of medical care.
“SERNAP has a health post with skilled staff who guarantee medical care for inmates in good time”, he said. “Serious cases are immediately taken to reference hospitals”.
In the court on Thursday morning, Baptista announced that he had visited the Civil Prison on Tuesday where he had visited the cells, and spoken to Leao and to the prison management.
On Monday he had told the court he would visit the prison on Wednesday. He said he had anticipated his visit by 24 hours, “because I did not want to be accompanied by journalists”.
He said Leao told him she was taking her medication and was now feeling well. The prison management gave him copies of all the notes issued authorizing her to leave the prison for medical treatment.
Recently she had been examined at Clinicare, a private clinic in central Maputo, where she was diagnosed with “serious cranial trauma”. Since the prison, and Baptista, found this diagnosis incredible, she will be re-examined at a public health unit, the Mavalane hospital.
Baptista warned that, if the Clinicare doctor is found to have lied about Leao’s condition, he could face criminal proceedings.
The prison managers also told the judge that Leao has broken prison rules on at least two occasions, when mobile phones were found in her cell. Cell phones are strictly banned from prisons, yet somebody had smuggled phones in for Leao’s use.
Baptista denied reports that the name of former President Armando Guebuza has been scrubbed from the list of witnesses. Some of the media jumped to this conclusion when, on Monday, Batista announced a revised schedule for witnesses, in which Guebuza’s name did not figure.
This was simply because the rescheduling only covered the first half of December. It had been made necessary because witnesses testifying to Angela Leao’s real estate dealings, supposedly financed by bribes paid by the Abu Dhabi based group Privinvest, can only be heard once she has recovered enough to attend court and hear what they have to say.
“We altered the calendar so that the witnesses whose testimony concerns Angela Leao will be heard after 14 December”, said the judge. “Nothing else has been changed. No witnesses will be dropped. We just changed the order”.
As was always planned, Guebuza will be the last witness called. Whether this will be before or after the Christmas holiday depends on how long it takes to question several other key witnesses, such as the former National Director of the Treasury, Isaltina Lucas, and former Fisheries Minister, Vitor Borges.
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