Mozambique: Nyusi announces pardon for prisoners

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Mozambique: Nyusi announces pardon for prisoners

5:59 CAT | 17 Dec 2020

File photo: TVM

Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi announced on Wednesday that he intends to pardon all prisoners held in the country’s jails who have served at least half their sentences and have shown “exemplary behavior” while in prison.

The pardon will also cover elderly prisoners, and those who are chronically ill.

Nyusi announced the pardon to the Mozambican parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, at the end of his annual State of the Nation address.

“We are working so as to grant a pardon”, he said. “We are doing his because we are aware that we have citizens who ought to leave the prisons for one or other reason”.

He said that, of those who benefitted from previous pardons, less than one per cent had gone on top re-offend. That small number was not sufficient to sacrifice prisoners who had shown repentance for their crimes.

Justice Minister Helena Kida told reporters that about 1,800 prisoners will benefit from Nyusi’s pardon. She said they will all be released by the end of December.

A further result of the pardon will be to ease the pressure on Mozambique’s overcrowded prisoners. In the light of the Covid-19 pandemic, conditions in the jails have become a threat to the inmates’ health.

In April this year, the Assembly passed an Amnesty law, specifically to deal with overcrowding and halt the spread of Covid-19 within the prison system. That amnesty set free 5,032 prisoners serving sentences of one year or less.

Source: AIM