Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique’s National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) has identified three of the four criminals shot dead last Friday in a clash with police in the southern city of Matola.
All three had escaped from the Maputo top security prison in a mass break-out in December, during the post-election unrest.
One of the escapees was identified as Amade Mabunda, who was serving a 24 year prison sentence for the murder of prosecutor Marcelino Vilanculos on 11 April 2016. Mabunda confessed that he had shot Vilanculos with an AK-47 assault rifle at the door to the prosecutor’s home in the Matola neighbourhood of Tsalala.
The Matola court found that Mabunda had fired the fatal shots, in an attempt to prevent Vilanculos from continuing his investigations into the kidnappings of businessmen in Maputo and Matola.
Mabunda said he had been recruited to carry out the murder by a certain Jose Coutinho. Coutinho could not be brought to trial for this crime, even though he was already in prison after being convicted for other offences.
He was broken out of prison by an unidentified gang using a Sernic vehicle. It turned out that Coutinho was taken from prison, not to rescue him, but to silence him, since his lifeless body was found in a shallow grave a few days later in Moamba district, about 70 kilometres north of Maputo.
The other two bodies identified by Sernic belonged to Rachid Khan, who was accused of taking part in kidnappings, and Constantino Cossa, jailed for the possession of banned weapons and criminal conspiracy. The fourth man shot dead has yet to be identified.
After the Friday clash, police spokesperson Claudio Hulele said the four were criminals who intended to rob a construction company. He added that, a few metres away, police found a bag containing two AK-47 rifles and two pistols. “We believe that these firearms were used by the criminals in their activities”, he said.
There remain unexplained aspects of the Friday shootings. One is that, according to witnesses, the policemen involved were wearing masks. No explanation for this has yet been forthcoming.
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