Mozambique: President announces detention of Nampula-based foreigner recruiting youths for Cabo Delgado attacks

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Mozambique: President announces detention of Nampula-based foreigner recruiting youths for Cabo Delgado attacks

12:29 CAT | 03 Oct 2018

File photo: Lusa

Mozambican president Filipe Nyusi yesterday announced the detention of a foreign citizen with business interests in the north of the country on suspicion of recruiting youth and facilitating attacks on villages in the province of Cabo Delgado, Lusa reports.

“We have caught one of those responsible for deceiving our children. I wanted to bring him here today, but my minister tells me he is detained in Nampula [the provincial capital],” Filipe Nyusi told hundreds at a rally in Mueda district’s headquarters village, Cabo Delgado province.

Nyusi called the detainee and other suspects “rogues – bandits who want to spoil the growth of this country, because they have interests outside,” he said.

The Mozambican president was addressing the crowd even as “there are still attacks on villages”, in which [they] “burn houses and kill people here in this province”, enumerating the districts of Nangade, Palma, Mocímboa da Praia and Macomia.

“Stop it!” he said, addressing the instigators of the conflict.

Without revealing the detained man’s identity, Filipe Nyusi cited him as an example of a recruiter, “who is carrying off people and children”, and manipulating them to instigate a conflict “while [all the time] he stays there in Nampula, eating well, and these children are dying here [in Cabo Delgado]”.

The head of state sketched a portrait of the instigator as someone who “has shops in his [own] country, sells cell phones, has money” and who settled with a woman in Mozambique.

“We do not want anyone to die in this country through being deceived by another,” he added.

Filipe Nyusi said some of the young people captured after attacking villages said they did not mind if they were killed because they were going to “live well, there in heaven”.

For the Mozambican president, these statements were proof that they were manipulated in such a way as to claim to be Muslims, but without living by the habits and customs of those who follow Islam.

“They say that they are Muslims, but they are not,” he said, adding that in Mozambique people have always lived well “between Christians and Muslims”. “There were never any problems. Do not make up stories,” he said.

Armed groups have attacked several remote villages in Cabo Delgado since the first attack on Mocímboa da Praia in October 2017 by a group based on a local mosque preaching insurgency against the state, leaving tens of casualties, and many more displaced.

Notícias reports President Nyusi as saying there had been many other arrests, but that he had instructed the security and defence forces not to kill the detainees “because they are Mozambicans who have been used by people who do not want to see the development of this province or the country”.

“We do not want children to die through being exploited. We know some of them, because we have already caught them. Two of these youngsters were killed yesterday when they tried to launch another attack here in Cabo Delgado, and I was very sad because they are children who are dying. Why is it that these people do not recruit children from their own countries, but come to ensnare Mozambican children?” he asked.

“These are bad guys. They are rogues who want to ruin our country and do not know or respect Islamic rituals. Stop it!” he demanded, calling for a doubling of vigilance and the neutralising of those promoting instability in the province.

Source: Lusa / Notícias