Africa-Press – Mozambique. Mozambique’s Central Office for the Fight against Organised and Transnational Crime (GCCCOT) has announced the impending trial of three people, two of whom had worked in the justice system, on charges of kidnapping and murder.
In a Tuesday press release, the GCCCOT said that charges have been laid against the three, and the papers sent to court. Two of the accused are in preventive detention, while the third was provisionally released.
The crimes occurred in December 2022 on the premises of the Sorveteria Vanilla ice cream parlour, in the southern city of Matola. Here the three kidnapped a 57 year old Mozambican, the father of the owner of the ice cream parlour, and held him to ransom.
After 12 days, the victim’s family had not paid the ransom demanded by the kidnappers, and so the three decided to murder him. The GCCCOT said he was strangled, and his body dumped on a patch of waste ground in the Matola neighbourhood of Malhampsene.
Prosecutors are charging the three with, among other crimes, first degree murder, kidnapping, possession of banned weapons, criminal conspiracy, falsification of documents, and money laundering.
The GCCCOT release does not name either the victim or the three kidnappers. But it says that two of them held positions in public institutions linked to the administration of justice. “They made use of their privileged position to commit various crimes”, the release added.
One of them worked in a Provincial Directorate of Justice, and was associated with criminal gangs involved in the wave of kidnappings in Maputo and Matola. The GCCCOT said he also took part in forging documents, and in defending his fellow criminals in court, even though he did not have qualifications as a lawyer.
This man was arrested on kidnapping charges, and was sentenced to 23 years imprisonment in 2015. But he appealed to the Maputo Higher Appeals Court, which, much to the annoyance of the prosecution, acquitted him.
The Public Prosecutor’s Office appealed against the acquittal to the Supreme Court, which has not yet ruled on the case.
While the appeal was pending, this man continued his involvement with kidnap gangs including the December kidnapping at Sorveteria Vanilla.
A second of the accused was a member of a Provincial Directorate of the National Criminal Investigation Service (Sernic). He was also involved with kidnap gangs, and shared with them privileged information about criminal investigations.
He was arrested for corruption and the illicit release of prisoners, which led to his dismissal from Sernic in 2019.
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