Watch: Men trained in DR Congo to destabilise are captured – Mocímboa da Praia

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Watch: Men trained in DR Congo to destabilise are captured – Mocímboa da Praia

11:01 CAT | 22 Mar 2018

TVM

Three Mozambicans captured in the Democratic Republic of Congo are now in Mocímboa da Praia, Cabo Delgado province.

They were in DRC receiving military training at a base destroyed by Congolese government forces.

A Mozambican died during the offensive.

Watch the TVM report (transcript below):

Journalist: They did not know each other. They left Mozambique on different days and by separate routes. In fact, they come from different areas, too.

First man: Uh, a Tanzanian gentleman named Kyena. Yes. He took me. To Tanzania. And he said: We’re going to Tanzania, we overtake and we’re going to Congo. Because there are some Tanzanians who fled to Congo, from Tanzania. And they are there. In the Congo.

Journalist: They tell stories of individual travels but with common denominators: the first contacts, the promises, the routes and the destination…

First man: To train to do Jihad.

Journalist: They said to train to what?

First man: To do the Jihad.

Journalist: What is ‘to do the Jihad’?

First man: The Jihad … is … to fight. It is the war.

Second man: I was convinced… We were two, three. Him, the ‘Ché’, Daula; another called Dauda, his friend… The Mozambican Dauda was… my friend. He was the one who convinced me that… that we had to continue with the work of digging stones. We left, he gave me 100 thousand, for me to be able to travel. They were the first to go. Said that I had to meet them in Mtwara, Tanzania, I went there and met them at the station. We went to Dar es Salaam, to the station called Rongo. When we got there, we slept at the station. One day. Second day, we left for Bujumbura, the capital of Burundi.

Journalist: Muarabo Asssane is the youngest of the detainees. He is 17 years old and has difficulties speaking to our reporter.

Boy: … … Said I want to open a shop, that guy there, for me to stay, right?, the employee. But when I go there, there is no shop nor what.

Journalist: It was what?

Boy: To be able to, to be able, to be studying the Koran, I don’t know what … Nothing more.

Journalist: And after, to train.

Boy: To train, that… It has two places … I stayed in that place one, the first. That place two I never go there.

Journalist: Even so, he was being trained and indoctrinated to kill.

They are not sure where they were going to operate, but they say they heard Congo, Tanzania or Mozambique.

They arrived in the Congo in August of last year. Two months later, in October, for some reason, they were not at the base on the day of the attack by the Congolese forces.

Second man: I was there with a patient. A man called Juma came, a Tanzanian, to help me take the patient to go hide in another place.

Journalist: But later the Congolese authorities uncovered information that helped them capture the Mozambicans and other members of the group who were not at the base on the day of the attack.

Second man: I … saw that it was not appropriate to hand myself in to the police. I went to Immigration to hand myself in and for them to send me back to my country. In fact, after having handed myself in, they took me to the police. The police thought I should go to prison for three months and then they could give me back.

Journalist: In Congo, they stayed in jail for six months. On February 14, they were handed over to the Tanzanian authorities and, a month later, were deported to Mozambique.

Officer: This is information that is coming from other countries. For example, from Tanzania. We are receiving information through those exchanges among Defence and Security Forces. We are exchanging information. We are cooperating. Towards resolving this occurrence of this group of extremists. At the level of the region.

Journalist: The Mozambican police say it is working to find the recruiters, or the masterminds, responsible for the travels of the three detainees.

They are detained here in the cells of the district police command, in Mocimboa da Praia.

They mourn the death of their compatriot and friend in the forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo and count the money they were promised which in the end would never arrive. They now look at a future which is in the hands of Mozambican justice.

Source: TVM