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Mozambique: Interior Minister says financial sector is important in fighting kidnappings
3:12 CAT | 27 May 2020
FILE- For illustration purposes only. [File photo: BBC]
Mozambique’s interior minister, Amade Miquidade, said today that the financial sector could play an important role in identifying kidnappers in the country, due to the movement of money to pay ransoms.
Amade Miquidade addressed the matter of kidnappings in Mozambique when he answered questions from the deputies of the Assembly of the Republic (AR) about authorities’ efforts to put an end to this type of crime.
Success in combating kidnappings depends on “coordination with the financial sector to better identify the active subjects of this criminal activity,” Miquidade said.
The complexity of this type of crime, he continued, required the cooperation of all justice institutions and of society as a whole.
The interior minister assured his listeners that the Police of the Republic of Mozambique (PRM) and the National Criminal Investigation Service (SERNIC) were committed to securing the rescue of victims, seizure of the means used in the commission of crimes and referral of the perpetrators to the court.
Since the beginning of 2020, Mozambican authorities have recorded a total of seven abductions, always of businessmen or their close family members.
On Wednesday of last week, SERNIC rescued two businessmen and arrested four people suspected of involvement in the crimes.
The authorities released Rizwan Adatia from a 21-day captivity in a neighbourhood in Boane, and Manish Cantilal in Matola after 92 days. Both places are located on the outskirts of Maputo, the Mozambican capital.
On Thursday, commercial sector businessman Liacat Umargi, linked to the ‘Moreira & Slilva’ chain and kidnapped a week before in Beira, Sofala province, central Mozambique, was released in “undisclosed circumstances”, a police source told Lusa.
After a wave of kidnappings in the main Mozambican cities which peaked between 2012 and 2013, the number of cases had decreased, but in recent months authorities have seen a resurgence in this type of crime.
Figures from the Attorney General’s Office indicate that 15 criminal kidnapping cases were opened in 2019, one more than in the previous year.
Source: Lusa
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