Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambican police have arrested two people suspected of kidnapping the son of a businessman, an eight-year-old child, last Tuesday in the city of Maputo, southern Mozambique. The child has since been released, a source from the force announced today.
“One of the people arrested was a former collaborator of the victim’s family, where he worked as a driver. He had telephone contact with some family members and it was through this contact that they demanded the ransom payment,” said João Adriano, spokesman for the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC), in the city of Maputo.
The child was kidnapped on 27 May in Sommerschield, an upscale area of the Mozambican capital, and released by the suspects the same day, after pressure from the police, the spokesman said.
“Feeling pressured at a certain point by SERNIC’s work, they contacted the family to inform them that they had abandoned the victim somewhere in Marracuene [outskirts of Maputo]. The family then rushed to the location and recovered the child,” said João Adriano.
According to the police, the suspects were arrested on 28 and 29 May, in possession of a gun and a knife.
The wave of kidnappings that has been recorded in Mozambique since 2011 has mainly affected businesspeople and their families, mainly people of Asian descent, a group that dominates commerce in the urban centres of the country’s provincial capitals.
On 29 April, the Attorney General of Mozambique (PGR), Américo Letela, admitted that it was difficult to identify and neutralise those responsible for the kidnappings, denouncing the involvement of members of the police and magistrates in the crime.
According to data from the Public Prosecutor’s Office, 32 cases related to this type of crime were opened in 2024, with the rescue of at least 13 victims and the arrest of 21 suspects, the seizure of six firearms and the dismantling of three prisons.
Since 2011 and up to March of this year, the Mozambican police have recorded a total of 205 kidnappings and arrested at least 302 suspects involved in the crime, the Government said, admitting that there are “challenges” in stopping these events.
Around 150 businesspeople have been kidnapped in Mozambique in the last 12 years and a hundred have left the country out of fear, according to figures released in July by the Confederation of Economic Associations of Mozambique, which argued that it was time for the Government to take measures to combat this type of crime.
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